


Wading Through Your Ventilator

by Blucifer



Series: Wading Through Your Ventilator [1]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: 90s Venice Beach AU, Anal Sex, Athletic Sex, Casual Sex, Group Sex, Identity Issues, Like a half second of Changlix, M/M, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Public Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Relationship Negotiation, Vomiting, and then try to light a tea candle, like one mention of club drugs in ch 2, meathead bangbin, monogamy negotiation, they set themselves on fire, this isn't slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-05-07 20:57:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19217401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blucifer/pseuds/Blucifer
Summary: If they're the same, and Chan desperately wants to believe that they are, because they're identical in almost everything. Extra onions and no pickles, syndicated Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes at three A.M., free weights and one night stands. Why would the crippling fear of what happens when a one night stand turns into almost two months be the one thing they differed on?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A playlist to accompany the fic: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRCEVpO1IJ7pyAAXodp2piLVoFm9dbJ-R

_Clink-Clank-Clink_

The bench press machine next to Chan’s rattles and shakes under an amateur’s abuse. The sound is grating sure, but not so grating as is the reason behind it. Chan knows all of the kinds of people that come here and all of their motivations, so he doesn’t have to look over to know who is beside him. This isn’t a leather skinned meathead; the fact that he hasn’t been offered unsolicited advice on how to best bulk up is proof of that. No, these sounds come from a tourist with a day pass visiting from Minnesota or Milwaukee. Someone determined to pull his muscles, snap a few pictures, and talk about what a great pump he had when he gets back into fly over country.

Chan has his assumptions, but these assumptions are grounded in sun bleached and sand stung years of personal experience.

This morning, those assumptions are blown out of the water. Chan looks to his left and finds a man that is neither tourist or local. Liminal, like the very boardwalk on which they work out, all temporary structures and seasonal hustle.

The boy next to him wears a pair of faded, flea market hyper-color shorts, but its paired with brand new Nikes. His bowl cut hair smacks of the stylings most often given by mothers, or better yet someone else's’ mother, in cramped, hot 5th floor apartment in Korea town. Not from here, but of here.

His body is trapped in a liminal state too. He’s got an erratic sunburn where red melts into tan skin. Wiry limbs bulge with growing muscles that poke at his biceps and calves like he hasn’t been working out for very long, or when he does it isn’t comprehensive. What he lacks in experience and form he makes up for in determination. Grit teeth and furrowed brow.

He’s intriguing, like a dedicated car wreck.

Chan cannot bring himself to look away.

“Hey, man could you spot me at the press?” No one needs a spotter for a weight machine. But, immediately, the boy becomes a compulsion. Can’t not mind his business between the grating _clank-clank_ and the undeniable fact that he’s _just_ Chan’s type. ”Of course I’ll do you.”

The stranger pulls off his cheap, yellow padded headphones slowly. The metal springs backwards and flicks him in the ear. He looks at Chan quizzically, as if he wants Chan to repeat himself.

So Chan does.

The confused look lingers. With furrowed brow, he mouths the words along with Chan like he’s trying to process what has just been said, almost can, but ultimately falls a few syllables short.

Third time's the charm when Chan tries again in Korean. " _Can you spot me?”_

At that, the boy’s face absolutely lights up as he grins from ear to ear, “hell yeah!”

Just the sight of that big sheepish smile makes Chan’s stomach drop.

Cause if he’s being honest, he told himself no more cruising. At least…no more cruising the monolingual. No more cruising boys with ink barely dry on their visa. No more cruising the boys that let him take them out for samgyeopsal, but won’t blow him in the back seat of his Nova cause they’re never going to stop being afraid.

Chan’s not looking to go home and meet anybody’s mother. Men may hold hands up and down the boardwalk, but he knows it’s different as soon as you cross Vermont Ave. That’s just kind of the way it is. He’s okay with that, but it hasn’t stopped him from falling hard and fast for anything resembling kinship.

“I’m Changbin. Who are you?” Changbin stands up from the low bench, leaving his Walkman perched on the machine. With his movement, the device is yanked upward and hovers in mid air before snapping free from the headphone jack. As the Walkman clatters to the ground with a smash, the air is filled with familiar sounds of electric organ layered with harsh guitar that Chan’s played a hundred times or more in the tape deck of the Nova.

This boy is Korean, likes to pump iron, likes psychedelic punk. Unfortunately, Chan’s fallen for boys with whom he’s had far, far less common ground.

He’s so fucked.

Changbin scrambles to jam the stop button, but Chan interrupts, bending at the knee to reach for the Walkman.

“It’s okay,” Their fingers brush against one another. Suddenly, his chest feels tight, and he’s ready to throw out every hastily assembled self-preservation measure out the door.  “I love this album, and um…I’m Chris. Well, everybody calls me Chan.”

_So. Fucked._

* * *

 

It’s nice to hear Korean at the Boardwalk especially when all he hears is tourist English accented in so many colors and shades that it doesn’t matter if people say words that he knows. It’s nice to hear Korean at the Boardwalk, because if they aren’t speaking English they’re speaking Spanish. It’s familiar in tone because it’s his boss speaks, and so foreign in his actual understanding. He knows like three words. _Elote. Chicharrones. Paga. Cheque de pago para Changbin_ when Luis comes round on Fridays. Those count right? 

It’s like this. He lives with his very Korean parents, and he lives in very Korean Koreatown. Except, he works all damn day, and so do his parents. Being all together _and_ awake is rare. Friends? It’s a work in progress. At the end of the day he can go days on end without hearing or speaking his native tongue, and when he finally does it’s because he’s gone to the corner store for groceries.

So he _kind_ of gets it, the reason why Chan looks at him like he’s some kind of boardwalk anomaly. Seriously, Chan looks at him, and softly touches him, the _exact_ same way Changbin looks at Crazy Edith’s obese and equally crazy chihuahua. Seriously, the dog gleefully wears a cowboy hat. Chan looks at him like he’s something that’s easy to pour affection onto, and too bizarre to not gawk at and prod.  

“Seriously though, I can’t remember the last time I listened to this album. Like honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone who likes the Soft Boys.”

“Yeah?” Changbin responds between reps with aching breath. Yeah, he’s doing two more sets than normal to impress a guy he just met ten minutes ago. “It was in the discount bin at the record store. So, I bought it.”

“They’re super underrated,” Chan responds.

Changbin’s muscles scream with a burn that promises to settle into an ache and make his whole shift hell, which is of course, fantastic.

Fuckin worth it though. Chan’s shirtless, and looms over the bar. Changbin gets a view that he knows the dirty old men that do calisthenics in the corner would pay a fortune for.  Chan’s like, perfect.

Changbin like, wants him. Wants to be like him, muscles ripple down his stomach under tan skin. Unlike the other people who frequent the outdoor gym, his body type is lean and compact, not overly bulky.

Natural. He looks natural, and that’s kind of rare down here.

Mouth slightly parted, tongue upon his lips, Changbin can taste the salty sea air. Sunspots dot the bright blue sky that surrounds and darkens Chan’s form.

Chan smiles at him. Chan has no problem at all cupping his bicep and correcting his form, even though Changbin’s pretty sure there’s absolutely nothing wrong with with it.

He’s got to be doing this on purpose right?

Difficult to tell. Changbin doesn’t meet boys like this. No names, no smiles, no trading the names of bands that alt kids _wished_ they’d heard of like secrets.

Changbin doesn’t _think_ about boys like this. It’s way too difficult to go through the task of decoding _is he?_ Way too painful to cope when he finds out in fact no, _he isn’t._ He prefers the ambiguity removed, and the niggling sensation of intimacy checked at the door.

So why come it’s so easy to look up at Chan with a big dopey smile?  

Why come he wants to know whether or not Chan has a girlfriend? Maybe it’s because he looks like the kind of person who would never have a problem getting a girl if he wanted one. Maybe some skinny thing that smoked long thin cigarettes from a rhinestone covered case and worked selling sandals and gaudy blouses at some shop in the galleria.

Then again, Chan is cool. He could probably, if he wanted, get an American girl. Nose ring, blotted hangul tattoo that she couldn't even read, adopted parents that could never understand why she’s unhappy.

It’s just a little bit pathetic, how he kind of hopes that Chan doesn’t...have a girlfriend.

There’s a gross, churning feeling in the pit of his stomach at the realization that Chan could very easily be into men. He’s seen the same pair of turquoise colored Jordache shorts pulled around the ankles of men, pooled at the beer stained floors of bars more than once. He touches Changbin’s bicep, and his skin burns at the contact.

If he shakes out the sand on the blanket of his consciousness, he would have to admit that he’d fuck a cave troll if he met someone that wanted to talk about the mountains, and the ocean, and the little raked rooftops of temples tucked away throughout the city back home.

For better or for worse, Chan’s anything but a cave troll and Changbin wants him very much.

“What else you like?”

Suddenly his mouth feels dry. Put on the spot, he senses some kind of test there’s no way he’ll pass. “Electronic.” Quickly he adds, “the group. I have the tape from the swap meet.”

“Is that right?” Chan smiles down at him warmly. “You know the Pet Shop Boys?”

“One song?” Changbin screws his eyes shut and sings like he’s at home alone with the shower radio listening to KABX. “West end girl, nah nah nah nah.”

Chan laughs. “The singer is the same. Electronic and the Pet Shop Boys.”

They rotate out so that it is now Changbin’s turn to spot Chan. There’s a small part of him that hoped, maybe even believed that Chan would pull him into the locker room and jam his hand down his pants. He’s disappointed, but not surprised when instead Chan pulls weights from the rack and adds them to the bar.

Rotating through the machines, they talk about the mountains, and the ocean, and the little raked rooftops of temples tucked away throughout the city back home. Chan’s been here for almost ten years, and he was in Australia before that. Changbin confesses that he’s been here for six months.

“Then we should talk in English, for practice.” Chan switches effortlessly because for him, it is.

“We can try,” Changbin responds in English. But in that moment Changbin’s acutely aware of the position of the sun in the sky and the tightness in his chest. “But maybe, maybe tomorrow, I need to go to work.”

“That’s a shame,” Chan smiles at him with wide begging eyes. “I was hoping we could go for a run.”

Changbin hates running. “You work down here too?” He’d run a marathon right now if Chan asked him to.

“Yeah,” Chan responds. “Venice Hostel. My parents own it. And, if I’m not working there, I’m working at the corner store on the first floor, which is ours too. Or I’m at class. But honestly, I’m always working.”

“Me too. I sell sunglasses.” He knows where the hostel is, and he knows that there’s no reason for him to go down there. It’s a bit further down the boardwalk than convenient, but… “I’ll come buy something.”

* * *

 

It happens slowly with Chan.  Deep black bruises on his shins fade out to yellow slow. City traffic slow. Mom thunking on each and every melon at the grocery store to find some magic melon that grants three wishes, cleans the baseboards, and isn’t _too sweet_. Dad talking to old codgers at the barbershop slow. 

Chan wants to be close, and Changbin lets him, but only because he moves so slowly that Changbin never saw him until he was practically seated in his lap.

“What are you doing?” The convenience store counter is elevated so that Chan looks downward at him. His gaze, intense and scrutinizing, makes the back of his neck burn and his cheeks flush hot.

Changbin looks at the two cellophane wrapped conchas he placed on the counter alongside a bottle of red Fruitopia.  Then, he looks up to Chan’s kind expectant eyes. He wants an answer.

Changbin doesn’t have an answer. The scent of second-hand smoke and cheap nag champa swirls around the store and tickles his nose, and wouldn’t it be funny as hell if he sneezed in Chan’s face right now? How’s that for an answer. “I said I’d come buy something. So, I’m here.”

So what if he slunk into the store behind a pack of high schoolers. So what if he dutifully waited in line, waited for Chan to scan his items, paid in change, and turned on his heel to go...without saying anything more.

“Well, you know, I’m about to close down. We can talk while I do that. Then, I could drive you home.” Chan adds quickly, “I mean, if you don’t have somewhere to be.

God, that sounds a hell of a lot better in the back of his boss’s van crammed tight with six or seven other boardwalk kids who rent bikes, and sell cotton candy, and smell like body odor and sea spray. “Okay.”

Chan depresses one of the racks above his head guiding down a long row of red, blue, green, and gold cigarette package flags. He counts them down in sets of two and writes down the number on a crumpled sheet of paper on a clipboard. “I’m pretty sure my parents only started doing this because they were afraid I’d start smoking when I was a kid or something. We don’t really take inventory on anything else. Oh, you can sit,” Chan says gesturing to a tall barstool opposite Chan at the counter.

Not closer, but adjacent. The chair is pushed up against a flat plastic wall displaying lottery tickets. Further down the counter, crumpled college rule paper reveals green and red crayon drawings. Beach kids yank at the locked door while Chan counts down the drawer, and it all feels too personal.

“Ah, that’s not your dinner right?”

“No?” Changbin says in an unconvincing tone around a mouth full of cinnamon and icing flavored bread. But it’s kind of telling when he’s already scarfed down most of a bun, and they’re absolutely enormous. Only when Chan calls attention to it does he feel self-conscious about the crumbs and flaky pink icing everywhere, and suddenly he cares about the mess spilled down his front, the counter, and the floor.

“I haven’t really eaten anything either. Dad usually puts out some food for the guests. Simple stuff like rice and kimchi. I usually eat that. You could grab some stuff off the shelves and I could cook us some food. Like, if you wanted.”

Changbin swallows thickly, and a sugar lump gets caught in his throat. “Depends. You a good cook?”

Closer. Actually closer this time. They sit at a round kitchen table. That table is butted up against a long rectangular table, and that table is butted up against a short, square shaped table. Chairs are scattered all around. On the end opposite of himself and Chan, two impossibly tall girls with platinum blonde hair shuffle a deck of cards and drink from tall cans of beer that look freakishly large in their dainty hands.

“Channie, drink with us,” one of the girls says. Her voice is slightly accented so that _with_ becomes _wif._ Drink becomes _dreenk._  Her teeth are blindingly white and unsettlingly large in her dainty mouth.

“Ah, not tonight girls,” Chan places two bowls in mismatched china in front of himself and Changbin. “I’m entertaining tonight.”

“He can drink with us,” _dreenk wif us_ “too.” The other one speaks.

For whatever reason, the invitation makes his expression pull tight with anger. “Girls, girls, girls,” Changbin suddenly becomes fluent in English whenever he speaks to someone who has an accent just as thick as his own. This mysterious anger fuels him. Inspires him to get up, round the table, and turn the tab upon the can to the side so that he can take a sip of the woman’s beer. “Chan is a sore loser, you could drink him under the table. Me on the other hand, like a fish. But, I wouldn’t want to leave my friend out it just wouldn’t be kind.”

The girls laugh at him.

“I drank with them until four in the morning last night.” Chan admits with a sheepish laugh.

“Yeah, well you invited me up for a nice romantic dinner. Four’s a crowd you know.”

“Right, right.”

It’s the most basic of meals. It’s what his mom calls _helpless man food,_ and uh, when she moved to the states ahead of him and dad because she had a job ironed out, they _did_ eat it almost every night. Kimchi, half a wilted onion from the bottom of the fridge, oil, rice. No green onion, no egg, very little seasoning.  Except, unlike when he ate it last year in Seoul, it tastes delicious.

“So you...Live here?” Changbin asks between large mouthfuls of food.

Changbin’s question is loaded, and as if to cock the gun on his question a stocky hostel guest covered in a rug of thick black body hair enters the kitchen. He berates the blonde haired women in a sharp tone, “that’s mine? Can you not read names?” As the man points at the can, the girls move their hands, not to obscure but to almost proudly display. In sharpie marker, a single name _Bastian_ is written.

“Ah, you have a peaceful home life huh?” Chan laughs. “No walls so thin you can hear the neighbor’s baby? No grouchy landlady that comes up to like here,” Chan gestures just below shoulders. “Demanding the rent even though it’s the 28th?”

“Fuck off,” Changbin responds with a satisfying smack of his lips around cheap steel chopsticks. Chan’s assumption is close, far too close for comfort.

“Tell me if I’m wrong.”

“Yeah, you forgot the couple next door who fuck and fight all the time. The grandma upstairs who leaves her panties out on the balcony to dry. They always fall down and she always comes looking for them.”

  From the kitchen comes a clatter of pans, and the acrid scent of smoke. The wail of a smoke detector follows soon after. Chaos unfolds around them; Chan remains unfazed and so Changbin follows his lead and does the same. Chan tells him about all of the different times he’s walked in on people fucking and all of the places throughout the world they get Christmas cards from every year. He tells all of this to him in the same single breath, like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

When dinner is finished, Chan’s car is a different kind of close. No change in distance from when he sat across the table from Chan, but he feels much closer. Chan drives down the highway in an old Chevrolet that Changbin can’t help but think is _so cool._ The rustier version of the same cars he sees in the movies, the engine purrs. It’s decorated with a large red novelty cobra head gear shifter and a pair of fuzzy dice on the rearview mirror.

Cracked leather seats scrape against the exposed part of his thigh just above the knee. A single, horrible intrusive thought enters his mind. The leather would feel so awful against his back and his shoulders if he were naked.

If he and Chan were fucking.

“Your car is really cool,” Changbin sounds so stupid right now.

“Would you believe me if I told you it’s actually my mom’s?” Chan laughs.

“Yeah, totally,” Changbin pokes at the fuzzy dice.

“For real though. The vanity plate says Yum Bang. That's my mom, Yumi Bang. As soon as I was old enough to get my license she lets me drive it as much as I want so long as I take her place she needs to go. She hates driving in the city.” Chan gestures to a box made of fake wood resting in the middle of the long bench seat. “You can pick out a tape if you want.”

The cassette carrier is so heavy when he moves it into his lap. He could easily spend the rest of the drive thumbing through them. He settles quickly, maybe too quickly, on a red cassette tape with words on it that he knows _Heaven or Las Vegas._ Las Vegas, a place not so far from here that glows neon.

Changbin never buckled up to begin with, so it’s easy for him to slide over on the seat and pop the tape into the deck. Moving _back_ into the passenger’s side seat isn’t so easy. His body feels glued in place, his mind feels transfixed on the scant five or six inches between his leg and Chan’s. The ethereal, relentless base, drowns out intrusive thoughts of self doubt and allows him just for a moment to be _close._

He wants Chan. But even though it’s only been a day, he feels too close to fuck. The feeling, the want, is something that he should get rid of. Fast.

“Where are we going?”

“Santa Monica and LaJolla?” A question. Will Chan believe him? Will Chan question him? Will Chan know that block is filled with great places to get fucked.

Chan doesn’t, at least not right away. Chan drives and drives down the highway. His hand leaves the wheel to reach for the shining chrome cobra gear shifter. Each and every time, Changbin’s mouth goes dry as his hand comes dangerously close to, but never quite touches his thigh.

It should be something like a relief when Chan pulls off of the highway, and weaves through the side streets of this neighborhood which hides so many secrets. Instead, when Chan pulls over, Changbin feels stuck in place. Skin stuck to leather by sweat and boardwalk grime.

“So you live down here huh?” Chan looks at him like he _knows._ But if he knows, isn’t it Chan’s job to _do_ something? _Say_ something?

“Nah,” Changbin can feel the air right now, thick with smog and summer heat. It weighs heavy on his chest and makes breathing hard. “But um,” Chan’s close. So close. Changbin tries and fails to pat Chan on the shoulder, and in that instant, Chan’s closer. Burning skin and taut muscle. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Yeah man,” Chan looks first at the hand caught halfway between his chest and his shoulder and then at Changbin. His eyes glint with mischief, like he knows something that Changbin doesn’t. But the look is short lived, and something like shyness is left in his wake. Chan closes his eyes. When he opens them again, his lids are heavy.  Pink tongue parts Chan’s lips, wetting them with spit that shines in the reflective glow of the liquor store lights they’re parked outside of. “Any time.”

* * *

 

It happens quickly. One day Changbin's reading juice stained copies of _The Babysitters Club_ pulled from one of the many Robin's egg blue book loan boxes scattered throughout Venice. “For English practice,” he insists. The very next moment, he's jumped up to Steinbeck. 

Changbin was a stranger, and the very next day became his right hand. No, more intimate than that. A transplanted left lung, a ventilator on which he became dependent. Because Changbin found him broken and infected after years in the city had exposed him to smog, and wildfire smoke and filled his lungs with brackish seawater. Because Changbin fit into his life seamlessly and allowed him to breathe.

It’s for that reason and that reason alone he doesn’t ask _why_ Changbin told him to drop him off just steps away from an infamous cruising spot.

"So that guy. That maybe transient guy with a spray-painted sign giving advice for a dollar. My drawer was over this morning, so I went to him. I’ve always been curious you know?"

Changbin's muscles poked out hesitantly from his skin making him look gangly, and then the very next day, he could bench more than Chan.

Chan drives him down to West Hollywood to get fucked, and then they become something like best friends.

"Why do words in English not mean what they actually mean?" Changbin sits the wrong way on a duct tape repaired office chair. A pair of heart sunglasses rest over his eyes. Two pairs of round lenses are stacked on his head. His arms lined to the elbow with the various bracelets sold at the stand. "Like baby-sit. Why does the word babysit not mean babysit? I've seen plenty of American babies. They're always in little clam shells: car seats, water floats, stroller...no one is sitting on them."

"Are you listening? Also that woman is stealing."

Changbin whips his head upward and looks at the leather skinned waif of a woman with a pair of tagged glasses in hand.

"Oh, that’s just Deidra. She'll be back in a few days. Take a pair, leave a pair. Not even worth calling the cops for."

"Anyway, the fortune teller."

"Generous title," Changbin quips.

"He told me something like, “life isn't measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away,” and that got me thinking…Like, what’s the last time something’s taken my breath away?”

“Me,” Changbin beams at him.

“What if he’s right though. What if that smelly grifter is right? What if I’m not even breathing? My parents told me to go to school to school so I did. They told me to keep going to school, so I--”

“Don’t say that you did. The transfer papers from the community college are still tucked up under the sun shade in your car,” Changbin speaks frankly. “I think you’re breathing Chan. Here’s why.” Changbin grabs up his bottle of Crystal Pepsi and drains it, wincing at the fact that its warm. “At home, there’s a big fat roll of hundred-dollar bills stuck together with those purple rubber bands that come on broccoli. They’re sitting in the cookie jar in our kitchen. My mom wouldn’t let us come here until she had a big enough apartment for her and dad to have a room separate from me. My mom wouldn’t let me come here until she had enough for a year at college. So, she keeps yelling that that money is for me, but I’m afraid that the minute I slow down something awful is going to happen.”

In the middle of Changbin’s impassioned tirade, a trio of blonde girls come through and buy matching star shaped glasses. When he speaks again, his voice is softer now, and more vulnerable. “You’re breathing. I for one, would love to catch my breath,” and when Changbin puts it that way, yeah he sounds a little bit stupid.

Changbin, not content with his quiet, astute dress down of Chan adds, “also, that guy. Your guru, told me that the guy who sells photocopied charcoal drawings of the Beatles on the corner is half lizard man. So, I'd definitely take what he said to you to heart."

The tape deck changes sides with a _clunk_ , replaying _The Chronic_ for what has to be the third time today. Changbin, acting like he hasn’t been listening to the tape since sunrise, boosts the music and starts rapping overtop the audio track, “Gimme the microphone first, so I can bust like a bubble Compton and Long Beach together, now you know you in trouble.” Then, like he’s been at it for years he starts ad-libbing over the lyrics. “Luis the sunglasses man is the label that pays me. Me and Bang Chan so crazy,” all of this of course is said while Changbin gets up, and dances awkwardly to the beat.

Chan thinks nothing of the way that Changbin slinks behind him, probably to reach for more mango chilli candy. Chan lets out the most undignified squeal when he feels something icy cold make contact with his neck.

Changbin, fingers wet with ice from his never empty styrofoam cup, laughs at him, “did I do it? Did I take your breath away?”

He wants Changbin, but now he needs him just to breathe.

He should’ve just asked the day that they first met

* * *

 

Like a bad batch of oysters, or one too many "end of the blender" cocktails at the Mexican restaurant he haunts after work, Chan is just something he’s got to get out of his system in the most visceral, foul way possible.

So Changbin eschews his normal ride home in favor of an alley just off Santa Monica Boulevard. But, make no mistake, it’s his habit to not make this kind of thing a habit. Often enough to fuck the stupid out of his system. Often enough that he doesn’t forget how things work down here. Not more than once a week no matter how frustrated he feels because he never, ever wants to feel like he’d ever belong.

Picking someone up is easy. A sidelong glance at someone mildly attractive. A return glance to indicate that the feeling is mutual. Not preferred, not wanted, not anticipated, but acceptable. His brand new sneakers stick to the steps as he descends into the basement club where, unlike elsewhere in the neighborhood, drinks are laughably inexpensive and he never ever gets carded.

The inside smells thick like cigarette smoke, Vaseline, and the acrid sour scent of sex layered over sex layered over sex.

It takes minutes to catch glances. Moustache. Pass. Shorter than him. Pass. He settles on some UCLA student, advertised as such by the crewneck sweater he wears. It’s easy to see that the guy doesn’t belong here, doesn’t want to belong here. He grimaces at the way that his oxford loafers stick to the floor and jumps at the slightest nudge of strangers. The whole display makes Changbin hot with smugness because it smacks of inexperience. Makes him feel less self-conscious. Makes him feel like he knows what it is that he’s doing.

It takes seconds for them to drag one another away from the diminutive bar, which acts almost a formality. Fumble for the buckle, let his pants pool precariously below his ass. The feeling of sticky air against his skin is accompanied by the cool feeling of lube spilled down the crack of his ass. Tumble, lurch forward as he scrambles to balance himself on something, anything, and pray that he’ll unstick from the tacky wall when it's all over.

Then there’s the cold, sterile feeling of the condom and the endless push of the stranger’s cock. Hot lips on his neck that feel more like a nuisance than they do a welcome distraction.

Fuck.

He didn’t get a great look at the guys dick but there’s no way that it's actually as big as it feels. Splitting him in two, it makes Changbin’s dick twitch in agony.

The voracious club bass monster swallows up his cries, make his tears invisible, and in that moment he’s never been more grateful. The man behind him roughly grabs his hips, trying desperately to settle into a rhythm, but ultimately falls short. Two hard greedy thrusts are followed by something slower and steadier. No sooner than it starts to feel good, the man behind him will grind to a halt, and pull his dick half out in a furtive effort to not cum too soon.

It fucking sucks.

Cause the burn is supposed to fade out into the glow and the stretch. Something slightly better than whatever he manages to do to himself with two fingers in the shower at home is _really, actually_ supposed to happen. Pump after pump, slap of skin against skin, Changbin waits for it to come, but it just never happens.

But Changbin’s a pragmatist and there are plenty other, prettier people with a better fuck than he has here tonight. He’s fine with watching.

Scanning the room in dim light, Changbin’s given a gift for which he knows he'll pay a thousand-fold.

Cause he’s given a glimpse of Chan, and his cute, round boardwalk face.  Chan, the entire reason he's here with some wiry fuck buried deep inside of him, and he’s no more than a few feet away from him.

 Something like that doesn’t come for free.

He’ll sign his name on the devil’s contract anyway, because the image before him is liquid perfection. Chan and his partner’s position mimics Changbin’s. Bottom precariously braced against the wall. Chan grabs his partner's hand and bends it behind his back, holding him there in willful blissful captivity.

Just by looking at the guy Chan’s fucking Changbin knows. Eyes screwed tight, lower lip caught between his teeth, bare chest fluttering, Chan is an amazing fuck.

There’s some loud twisted part of his brain that hopes, prays that the reason Chan is here is the exact same reason why he's here. Him. Them. A volatile mixture of confusion laced with affection, and nothing to do other than fuck it out.

Changbin stares at Chan with an ember like fire that demands to be noticed.

Chan gives him what he wants. Chan, finally burned with the harsh abrasion of Changbin's glare, looks upward through long lashes and locks gaze with him.

Changbin’s knees buckle.

Suddenly, the skilless cock pounding into him feels like the very best thing in the world.

Changbins had these moments before. There are times when a person’s very presence is personally offensive. Chan looks at him with such a feeling now, head cocked to the side, ember jealous eyes glued to the sight of Changbin getting railed. In the faint glow of the club light he can see the muscles of Chan's neck clench and ripple in something like anger.

Disgust, but not directed at him.

Want. Undeniably directed at him.

Like he’s entitled to Changbin’s body even though he's never taken the time to ask.

Honestly, Changbin absolutely loves every poorly mixed drop of entitlement and confusion that drips from Chan's face. Feels right. Feels like getting even for all the nights he’s crawled into bed after Chan dropped him off at home and jerked his cock to a question.

The low heat of Chan's gaze grows into something melted and inferno like. He can feel it burn hot across his chest and drip backwards down his back in warm tendrils like hot wax from a candle.

Changbin loves the feeling of Chan looking at him like he's a single provocation away from pulling out of the dude he's fucking. So close to grabbing Changbin off the guy he's fucking and dragging them both deeper into the backroom to fuck an apology out of Changbin for a transgression that Chan is equally guilty of.

Changbin loves it, but it isn’t fair. Chan makes him put way more effort into this mediocre fuck than it deserves. Arch his back and look at Chan with heavy lidded glances just to make sure that he knows. Yeah, begrudgingly, he does wish it were him, not some other guy, fucking him senseless into a vodka tonic and cum stained wall.

Chan must feel the exact same way. Its apparent in the way that he never once looks away. Does all kinds of superfluous little things just to hold Changbin's attention. Rolls his fingers over the nipples of man he's fucking. Gives him long slow jerks on his cock that are infuriating just to watch let alone feel.

Defiant and angry, Changbin slaps away the hand at his own cock and pumps himself with the kind of aggressive touch that teeters on the brink of pleasurable and wholly abusive. Twist of his wrist at the head, roughly trail down the shaft over and over again. Chan makes him do this to himself.

Swear to God, in the flashing bar light he can see Chan bite his lower lip and mouth, needy urgent, and all for him, two syllables, one word, his name on Chan’s tongue, "Changbin".

Just then, the man buried deep inside of him takes this moment to get good. Head of his cock catching at his rim before slamming back inside.

Helpless, scraped up through his lungs, Changbin responds. Not a simple pantomime of Chan’s name, but a plea, deep and from the throat. Drowned out over the music, but deafeningly loud, Changbin feels with his whole body just it as much as he hears it "Chan."

Over and over and over again, Chan’s name is on his tongue as he jerks himself in rough, almost abusive motions. The low rolling heat coils at the base of his cock until he cannot hold Chan's smoldering glare any longer. Eyes screwed shut, free from scrutinous gaze, he can almost believe that the cock that cums deep inside of him belongs to Chan.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For visualization purposes, here's the position they're in. it's h https://gaysexpositions.guide/danseur/

Surprised isn't the word he'd use to describe seeing Changbin get his ass pounded in a dimly lit backroom. After all, the night they met Changbin asked him to drop him off.  

Jealousy...jealousy is close. Jealousy made him want to pull that other man off of Changbin. Pride. Pride is close too. Pride is what kept him grounded in place and prevented him from fucking the person that he _wanted_ to fuck.

The actual word comes to Chan when he’s sitting in the front seat of the Nova, white knuckle gripping the steering wheel because Changbin slipped through his fingers.

Its ugly.

_Entitled._

Despite just meeting Changbin, he feels so entitled. He's pretty sure that knows every Korean boy that likes boys.  He’s taken most of them, save for the ones that Felix managed to get to first, by the sweat slicked hand and guided them down the long torturous descent into club backrooms

He tells them where to go for condoms if the lady that works the convenience store counter is a gossip, and what to do if they get caught. He unlocks the Nova with a smile and fucks them in the back seat.

Changbin should be one of these boys. He’s brand new here, and yes Chan feels entitled to this experience of initiation. Because despite being brand new, Changbin is anything but confused about how _any_ of this works.

The fact that Chan is unneeded, when he himself so badly needs is infuriating.

The fact that Changbin is so different, to the point of being exotic, only makes Chan want him more.  

Seven whole hours elapse between watching Changbin hastily pull his pants back up and stumble out of the backroom and seeing him again in real life.

“Morning,” Changbin’s grin is particularly wide and toothy when they meet by chance seven hours later at the outdoor gym.

Chan isn’t convinced that the sight of Changbin, glowing with sweat in the faint morning light isn’t some kind of cruel hallucination. He couldn’t sleep last night. He had no plan for today other than to skim the boardwalk until he got, or at least tried to get, what he was entitled to. Changbin.

“Hey.” Chan abruptly skips the first five machines on the circuit to sit at Changbin's side. Fuck whether or not it "looks" desperate. Seven hours. He’s absolutely desperate.

"Hey. It’s leg day,” Changbin smiles like he knows. Like he knows that Chan feels entitled, and he’s going to deny him again just for fun. Changbin bends his leg back at the knee in a basic stretch before tugging it back further, higher and higher until it looks like the ball of his foot could lay flat on the small of his back.

Fuck.

"You're really flexible."

"You're really strong," Changbin says in response to the weight Chan's stacked on the leg extension machine.

Just as bumbling and awkward as it is sex-static charged.

It's funny, cause most people would give the world to turn back the hands of time. Now, Chan and Changbin are back to day one, minute one. Nothing uttered between them, but the _clink clink_ sound of stacked weights raising and lowering, and guttural grunting noises torn from deep inside.

Intimate strangers.

Does Changbin make those same angry noises when he’s getting fucked? Would he like it if Chan made those same growling sounds into the shell of his ear while he fucked him?

Much like in the club, they cannot bring themselves to tear their eyes away from one another. Changbin's gaze burns against his chest. Stoke the flame and self-immolate. As they work, Chan peels his shirt off and discards it onto the gray painted over asphalt.

Changbin does the same, exposing a long archipelago of hickies from the crook of his neck, down his chest, and fading into the waistband of his teal shorts as one final mark rests on the v of his hips, half concealed by the waistband of his shorts.

White hot pulse of entitlement makes him press harder against the leg press platform, because each and every one of those marks should have been placed there by him. The fresh red ones last night, and the fading purple ones in the backseat of his nova, and the faint yellow blotches patched with purple black in the locker room.

He's going to paint over them in a much darker merlot shade and add new ones too.

Entitled.

Entitled and afraid. He can’t even reach out and grab what is right in front of him.

The next set is absolute torture. Eyes trained on each other, the burn in his muscles moves beyond pleasant and settles into soreness, but he's anything but physically tired.

“I was looking for you.” Maybe Changbin feels entitled too.

“Yeah? Why come?”

Finishing the set Chan rises and looms over Changbin at the leg press machine. Changbin smirks at him once more in satisfaction. In muted club light it’s exhilarating. In the bright morning light, it’s infuriating. “Lost something the other night. Thought maybe I’d find it in your car, or at the hostel or something.”

Chan doesn't suggest, he doesn't invite, and he doesn't offer. “You check the locker room?"

* * *

 

 

Chan tries to hide the fact that he’s kind of a bastard and does so well behind a warm genuine smile and an unprompted favor.

It’s kind of a shame. They probably could’ve fucked weeks ago if he’d been more upfront about it. But no, he waited for Changbin to drag it out of him. Like it was something to be ashamed of. From one bastard to another, it’s absolutely not.

They collide no sooner than they cross the threshold into the locker room. What they do with their teeth and lips and tongues are _something_ akin to a kiss. But kisses, even at their neediest, even at their most urgent are discernible. What they do now has no shape, no beginning and no end. Iron branded hands burn into compact muscle swathed in soft supple skin. Changbin holds onto Chan’s biceps as if he needs to be tethered. Chan rakes his hands down his flanks and presses the tips of his fingers _hard_ into his hips.  "You were so hot last night" Chan growls into the shell of Changbin's ear and it makes him shiver. "I mean you're hot now."

Of course he is, and he’s never going to let Chan forget it. Grazes his teeth across the muscles of his neck before biting down at the juncture.

"Fuck," the pressure on his hips burns slow into a stinging sensation as Chan tightens his grip on his body. Then, greedily, Chan jams his hands down the waistband of Changbin's shorts and squeezes firm smooth flesh. God he hopes he leaves fingerprints _._

"The way that you were looking at me...I kept waiting for you to push that guy off of me and fuck me yourself." Grinding his hips against Chan's crotch, Changbin ensures that he can feel every inch of his clothed cock pressed against his own.

"I should've. I fucking should've."

 

* * *

 

Changbin's mouth is somehow more dangerous and more cloying than he ever imagined, and god did he imagine. A forceful kiss melts into timid kitten licks at his mouth. Tongue flitting into Chan's mouth and making him chase him. "Jerked off like three times when I got home from the club. Like I didn’t even fuck," Changbin confesses.

What the hell is wrong with him? With them? He did the exact same thing.

Changbin, for all his muscle, is thrillingly easy to pick up. Changbin wraps his arms around Chan’s neck and his legs around his torso automatically, and they fit together so good. Changbin’s hot breath against his neck, the tips of his fingers digging into the muscle of his shoulders. Chan kneads the firm flesh of his ass as he carries Changbin across the locker room floor.

 After another wet, messy kiss Chan responds "I was so pissed off I couldn't find you after. I’ve wanted to fuck you since I first saw you." It’s too much. Too close to something dangerous. The truth.

Crash through one of the slick curtains that partition the shower stalls from the sink room. Unceremoniously, he places Changbin onto the floor.

There's a scramble to yank down their shorts and free their cocks. Chan fishes a condom out of his wallet and Changbin pulls a bottle of KY from his gym bag.

"Yeah," Changbin smirks. "Cruising hard. Harassing me at work with mixtapes and snacks." Changbin circles his hole with lube. He applies pressure, but never pushes inside. Like he wants it to hurt.

"Changbin," Chan tears the condom packet with his teeth and fumbles with it. “Stop fucking with me.” Now, now when he’d need it the most, the gravelly frustration is stripped from his voice, and all that’s left is a plea that’s fleshy and vulnerable.

“I’m not fucking around,” Changbin pulls him into another grueling kiss.

That’s all Chan needs. He slots himself behind Changbin. Changbin automatically braces himself against the wall and arches his back.

Chan pushes in roughly, and the pained noise that slips from the corner of Changbin’s mouth is addictive. He can’t just fuck Changbin. He has to _fuck_ him. Make it hurt, make it feel amazing, make it something that he won’t be able to forget no matter how many other people he fucks. So, he hooks an arm up under the joint of Changbin's knee and raises his leg high until Changbin whimpers.

When he finally bottoms out, their names leak from the back of their throats low and wanton. "Changbin" and "Chan" meld together into one single lust addled word.

For a fraction of a second, Chan considers giving Changbin a chance to adjust. Immediately Changbin's pushing back against him, rocking precariously on the ball of his foot. Chan understands immediately that there is no need. Chan responds with his body, pulling out as far as the ridge of the tip of his cock and slams back inside.

It's awkward at first. Chan fumbles on the balls of his feet, but Changbin has the strength to brace them. Sneakers, an artifact of constantly fucking in sticky bars, squeak against the wet tile floor in stark contrast to their blatant nakedness.

Because he feels entitled. Because he demands, Chan is merciless with Changbin’s body. But Changbin takes everything that he gives him and demands more, and that makes his own chest burn somehow hotter with red hot possessiveness.

If he pushes Changbin's body to the limit, Changbin does the same of him. Impossibly tight, to the point of being painful, Changbin's body relentlessly pulls Chan deeper, deeper and deeper.

Although the boardwalk sleeps until after ten in the morning, and the sun is barely risen, anyone could walk in at any time. But the moan that is torn from Changbin's throat is raked-through-glass coarse and just as loud. The sound that Chan makes in response, at the feeling of enveloped by Changbin, is equally desperate and equally audible.

In that moment, they're reduced to nothing more than a visceral, bodily juggernaut. Animalistic grunts when the rhythm is just right, and angry hisses when Chan goes in too deep or Changbin's balance waivers. Dense slaps of skin against skin, and the obscene squelching sound of lube and condom.

Coiling tighter, tighter, tighter, and begging to be set free, Chan knows he isn't going to last long. Relies on Changbin to help support them as he works a hand in front and jerks Changbin's cock in rough and erratic strokes.

"Chan," God his name sounds so fucking good when it pours out like viscous honey from Changbin's mouth. "Ch-an, gonna. I'm gonna--"

“Cum on my cock babe.”

Chan pumps him through it. Beyond when his hand is coated in sticky cum, until Changbin's voice grows pitchy and over sensitive. Only then does he close his eyes and thrust in hard. Shoves Changbin hard against the wall, latches onto an unmarked space on his neck and cums deep inside.

* * *

 

With Chan, there’s a question of what comes _after._ It’s been so long since he’s had to deal with _after.  After_ makes his chest feel tight and his stomach feel sick, not because he has to deal with it, but because he _wants_ to see Chan again. How easy would it be if _after_ just meant avoiding Muscle Beach before 9 AM, the smoothie bar on Abbot Kinney that Chan likes to go to, and the hostel in its entirety? That would be _very_ easy _._ Except _after,_ he wants to see Chan again so much that it’s almost painful. The twist in his stomach is only made it worse when he _doesn’t_ see him again _._

 His day off comes and goes and of course there's no Chan. That's expected, because he never goes down to the boardwalk unless he’s working. This is routine, but it doesn't stop the pent up, cranked high, destructive fuck energy from making him feel crazy.

For example, Chan let him borrow _Illmatic_ on cassette _,_ and yes he absolutely jerked it to the tape this morning to the memory of Chan hoisting his leg up high and pushing into him.

But he knows that this is crazy, and he knows that Chan can’t become a compulsion.

He can’t risk popping a half chub at the laundromat, so Changbin takes a chance on the first tape he finds at the swap meet with a fifty-cent sticker on the spine. It absolutely works, because nothing absolutely nothing has ever made him go softer than this curly haired horn playing bastard by the name of Kenny G.

Then, he does his laundry in goddamn peace.

The next day that he works, Changbin presumptuously assumes that he’ll see Chan again. A present will arrive at the sunglasses stand for him around lunch time under the guise of food truck elote, leftover fried rice, a can of Coke, or a package of mango chili candy. Chan won’t make the decision about _after_ for him entirely, but he’ll set it in motion because that’s just how he is.

Changbin watches hour by hour wind down on his turquoise Casio, and there’s no Chan _._ It pisses him off so bad that he pushes past all the daytime, tourist trap muscle heads that invade the gym during the day and lifts until his body screams.

Even then that isn’t enough.

So, by the time the sun has strolled down the boardwalk all the way past Santa Monica, and the sky's stained pink orange in its wake, Changbin's hand is forced.

The bell tied to the door jingles and announces his arrival at the corner store. The air inside smells stale. Beachgoers drift in and out between aisles, dripping water from their bathing suits and scattering sand across the floor.

Changbin dutifully falls into the queue where Chan’s little sister, who cannot be older than ten, stands upon an upturned plastic milk crate to better reach the register. A chihuahua, graying and toothless, glowers at customers through milky cataract eyes from a nest of blankets on the counter.

"Uh yeah, imma need some ID," she childishly demands from a man no younger than forty, covered in tattoos, buying a pack of Marlboro reds.

The customer just complies like it's the most natural thing in the world. 

Changbin decides then and there that the dangerous charm that Chan possesses must be hereditary

"Uh, is Chan here?" He asks when it's his turn at the register.

"You gonna buy anything Changbin?"

"That's extortion," he grumbles while he fishes a quarter from his pocket to buy a short roll of Necco wafers from the plastic bin near the scratch off lotto display.

"Maybe he's upstairs. I don't know."

“Seriously?” So Changbin exits the store and climbs three flights of stairs, two at a time, up into the hostel lobby only to find Chan’s little brother, who proudly boasted that he just graduated kindergarten, seated at the front desk.

A cigarette, still burning, the tip coated in coral lipstick rests in a glass ashtray on the desk. A portable television obscures a long row of room keys hung upon a wooden rack. The station is turned to black and white cartoons.  

The young boy at this counter is less authoritative than the girl. However, he’s still business minded. "I’m supposed to get my dad to look at your passport if you’re checking in... _DAD?_ ” Because he’s younger than the girl, he’s usually in bed when he and Chan slink into the hostel. Changbin can think of only a few times that he’s seen him. “ _WAIT NEVERMIND IT’S JUST CHANGBIN.”_  

Changbin winces at the volume and pitch of his voice.

"Is Chan here?"

"He's working downstairs today?"

Terrific.

Changbin wanders through the food stalls and past the storefronts that sell shining metallic bikinis, all to no avail. Left with no other options, he turns on his heel and proceeds east along the boardwalk, past the man with charcoal drawings, and the woman who sells hemp bracelets.

Seeing the tattered, spray painted sign makes him feel _livid._ “Advice $1”

Livid, but not because of the permanent layer of dirt on the man’s skin, not because of the afternoon that he yelled horrible things at Changbin. He can’t be too mad at those things, because take away his canopy, and his duct taped roller chair, and his boombox, and Changbin’s a whole lot like this guy.

No, it’s the fact that he thumbs all the change in his pocket and comes up short: three quarters, and two nickels. All because he bought some goddamn Necco wafers trying to find Chan. And he’s madder still that he’s going to give it to this guy anyway in hopes of some kind of answer.

“Hey,” Changbin dumps the coins into his upturned ball cap and prays that he doesn’t count the money. “Need some help. I lost something that I really want. Can you tell me where to find it?”

“Man,” the man rocks forward on his haunches reaching for the money. Fuck. Counts the coins slowly. “You didn’t even like...have it in the first place. Come back with some more money and I’ll tell you where it’s at.”

* * *

 

“He-ey buddy.” Felix is standing out on his front porch in little more than a pair of blue and gray plaid boxers and a glass of green juice in his hand, but Felix looks at Chan like he’s the weird one. “Whatcha doin huh?”

There’s two answers to that question. The first, what he’s doing. Here’s what he’s doing. He’s standing in the murky, knee deep water in the canals outside of Felix’s house with his track shorts yanked up high. Kimchi jar in hand, label peeled off, label glue grooves from the jar stuck to his hand, Chan’s doing what he’s always liked to do down in the canals.

Catch goldfish.

Not the big fat koi that purse their lips for scraps of bread, but the little guys, dumped into the water by people who don’t want their boardwalk prizes. It’s not cruel, really. If there are too many common goldfish, the millionaires that live in these houses will hire someone to come out here with a big green mesh net, drag them up, and toss them into plastic bags with their yard clippings.

And he just can’t bear the thought.

“There was a bit of an incident. One of the guys from Scotland puked in the lobby fish tank, and some of the little guys didn’t make it. Repopulation effort.” That’s not a _complete lie._ The survivors have been transported, and the water is on quarantine until he can test it again.

But Felix knows all of that. Second answer, what he’s _actually_ doing.

He’s avoiding Changbin. Kind of.

Make no mistake. He can count the number of times that Changbin’s come to see _him_ at the store. Usually, it’s Chan that travels down the boardwalk on break and sits at the sunglasses stand until he can feel his mom’s anger at his _generous_ time off radiate down the boardwalk.

If today had gone _like always_ he’d have seen Changbin at the gym just before 7:00. If today had gone like always, he’d open up at 8:00, read a quarter of a crappy paperback while ringing up customers, and then count down the hours til mom had all the rooms clean, and she came down to let him have his break.

Then he’d wander down to the sunglasses stand.  

Like _always,_ and yes, always consists of the past week or two, that’s how ingrained Changbin is into the fiber of Chan’s life.

Now he doesn’t know what the hell to do. Where do they go from here?

“Right.” Felix steps off of his porch, and onto the little rickety dock where his parents keep a wilting swan shaped boat tethered. Standing on the edge in his underwear, he offers Chan the glass of green juice.

Chan accepts it,and takes a long draught of spinach iron and lemon flavored juice. “I asked if I could have the rest of the day off.”

Felix sucks in air harshly, “wow. Must be really bad.” He drinks the rest of his juice and punctuates the action with a satisfied sigh. “You haven’t had a day off since you had shingles your first year of college.”

“That’s not true,” Chan insists.

“Name three.”

“Uh, when you begged me to go to Disney Land for your birthday.”

“That’s one.”

“When drove with my dad to San Diego to pick up the new car.”

“That’s technically work. C’mon gimme the jar.”

Chan complies.

Felix takes the jar of goldfish, and struggles to hold onto it. Unceremoniously, he dumps the goldfish back into the canal in a flash of shining orange. Tucking the jar up against his flank, he then uses his other hand to reach for Chan. “They’ll still be there tomorrow.”

The dock dips and shakes under the jostling as Felix pulled him upward.

What Felix says next is meaningful, but only in the unique, blunt around the edges and soft in the middle way that he can be.

Standing next to one another on the dock, Felix looks upward toward the sky. The morning marine layer of fog never quite lifted today, and allowed a clouded, windswept June gloom sky to linger well into the day. “You think it’s gonna rain?”

“I hope not,” Chan responds. “That’d be such a pain.”

Felix stuffs his hand down the front of his boxers and scratches his balls unapologetically. “Dunno. A rainbow would be pretty bitchin right now.”

“Kind of inconvenient for something that might not even happen. What if it stays cloudy?” Sometimes, when he’s talking to his friend, he feels like Felix speaks literally, and he’s long since wrapped himself in multiple layers of metaphor.

‘I dunno man, rainbows are really great and kind of worth it.”

* * *

 

Changbin lives pretty close to where he grew up. It’s just diagonal from the big blue art deco building that now holds a garbage chain restaurant. It’s just down the block from the best ramen in the city. Changbin lives in a four-story brick building. Each unit is colored by a different, sun-faded, dated-pattern pair of curtains in paisley and houndstooth, and gingham.

Chan _believes_ that this is where Changbin actually lives, although he’s only dropped him off here a handful of times.

As such, Chan has absolutely no idea which unit. So, he sits parked across the street, engine off, windows down, radio turned down because he’s listened to that tape four times in a row, but he can’t be bothered to find anything else or mess with the radio.  

And if he did know which unit, what would he do? Knock on the door, say hi to Changbin’s mother and then ask him if he wanted to go park somewhere and fuck in the backseat? Drive to the record store and rummage through the used bin until they could split a 5/15 on used cassettes?

Both?

And since he doesn’t know what unit, what’s he going to do? Sit here until Changbin walks up to the Nova and asks him in a champagne dry tone, what his fucking problem is?

Chan twists the key in the ignition and the engine rattles to life. The car lurches forward, and he’s swept up in the smog cloud that pulls him to destinations unknown.

* * *

 

Changbin has been exposed to every type of new age boardwalk bullshit. Reiki, and numerology, karma, and stuff pulled from someone’s third-hand, telephone, white bread version of Chinese medicine. All of it. Absolutely all of it is bullshit.

Usually it’s absolutely enough to tell himself that before he holds his breath and descends.

But what is it that the guy on the corner always says? “A butterfly flaps his wings in China and—hey that’s where you’re from right?”

Maybe, maybe if he’s not confronted by a dirty hippy on the beach, or a privileged college kid on vacation stoned out of his mind, he believes that the universe, like a cosmic junk drawer, has an appropriate place for everything.

Right now, Changbin has taken his own little junk drawer, his own little corner of the universe, and dumped it onto the floor.

Because he’s absolutely not supposed to be here, at the bar of _Someplace Else,_ a place whose namesake rings true. He absolutely wishes he were somewhere else right now.

The rule is never twice in one week, but Chan’s got him all kinds of fucked. If his place isn’t here, where the fuck else is it supposed to be?

Changbin stands at the bar, and with a shaky voice and thick tongue orders a whiskey tonic.

The bartender laughs and raises an eyebrow. Changbin knows the expression, _clueless foreigner and underage too._

“Uh, vodka tonic then.”

“That’s better,” if voices could purr over loud club music then the bartender does. Pours for him generously, even though Changbin’s got the charge of a vodka tonic counted down to the penny and clutched in his hands.

One. Two. Three long gulps. The bubbles tickle his nose and hit his gut hard, so he belches loudly.

Of course, _that_ catches the attention of a man nearby. Taller than Changbin, but that isn’t saying much. A faint birthmark dots his cheek, and it’s clear that he’s older. It’s clear that his place is _here._ “Can I get you another,” whisper shouted into his ear in the way that people only talk when they’re in bars.

Fuck it. “Sure.”

* * *

 

The Galleria food court isn’t his preferred cruising space now that he’s older than sixteen, and honest to God that wasn’t his intention. He was in the neighborhood, and a bowl of cheap, abundant bulgogi seemed like the next best course of action. 

He didn’t even make it that far.

Crash into the public bathroom, and barely manage to slide the lock closed. The boy who sinks to his knees and onto the gray and brown tiled floors looks slightly younger than Chan. With dark suntanned skin, and faded clothing, it looks like he spends more time at the beach than Chan.

He grabs Chan roughly around the waist, and squeezes his ass roughly. It feels weird having it done to him. Chan doesn’t get squeezed. He squeezes.

The _clink_ of Chan fumbling for his buckle is followed immediately by the metallic sound of his zipper pulled downward. Barely has a chance to pull out his cock before the stranger takes him all the way into his mouth.

His lips are quite thin, not plush and full.

His body is wiry instead of muscular and strong.

And normally that doesn’t matter. Chan’s type is available.

But right now it matters.

* * *

 

Changbin’s seen everything down at the boardwalk by now. The earthy, if not acrid smell of pot is as prevalent and familiar as the salt scent of the ocean. People in his apartment building trade thin little white pills bought over the counter at convenience stores in order to work impossibly long days at the oddest of hours. A week into his job in Venice he had to take a piss and walked into the public beach bathroom to someone shooting up, and at the beginning of May poured icewater on someone passed out on the grass with a needle nearby.

Alteration is a way of life on the beach. Something understood, but rarely indulged in. Most nights he goes out he usually nurses the same lukewarm domestic beer pulled from the backbar until he finds somebody to fuck. So, he’s definitely not interested in doing anything else.

With one exception.

The stranger takes a moment to stop rubbing his dick against his ass off tempo to offer, “want some?” Changbin doesn’t usually bother with the dance floor. The trip from the bar to the backroom is short and direct, but tonight he’s brought out by a man who _belongs_ there. Black lights and strobes make the stranger’s tacky looking houndstooth shirt look absolutely abhorrent.

The stranger offers a small glass bottle unconvincingly labelled “Blue Boy room Incense.” Poppers are absolutely a guilty pleasure. A rush like that’s like no other. Take it right before he pushes inside and it’s all usually over right after you fucking bust.

Effervescent vodka bubbles make it sound like an alright idea.

The fact that Chan may have very well may have _ruined_ fucking anybody else helps.

He accepts the bottle, covers one nostril, and inhales deeply. The giddy feeling doesn’t liquid coat his brain and his insides right away, which is unusual. So, he moves the bottle to the other side, and repeats the motion.

Immediately his stomach feels sour, and his mouth watery.

Only _after_ he’s breathed in deeply for a second time does he realize he’s made a mistake.

* * *

 

The boy darts from the bathroom no sooner than Chan cums. It’s kind of a shame, because he’s always down to return the favor. That’s just the way the universe works, give and take. Ah well, he’ll just have to look for other chances to give back.

Chan walks back toward the food court, settles in line, and orders a large bulgogi bowl to go.

He reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, but there’s nothing there. Check the other. Nothing. Check the front, far less likely. Nothing.

Then it hits him. The memory of the stranger grabbing his ass. Talk about give and take, that guy sucked his dick _and_ stole his wallet.

Wonderful.

* * *

 

Changbin’s fingers shake as he depresses heavy metal keys with the tips of his fingers.

God he hopes that he can remember the number.

Smog is thick in the air tonight and it only makes Changbin want to heave _more._ Everything in his vision has a slight aura around it, he does his best to avoid looking at the bright bar lights and signs along the street because they only make the reeling feeling worse. 

_Ring._

_Ring._

Followed by a clicking noise over the line, steady so that each beat pounds inside of his head.

 “Venice Hostel.” A woman’s voice undoubtedly Chan’s mom.

“Is Chan home yet?”

“Just a minute.” Like she recognizes his voice too. Then, muffled, “Chan, it’s for you.”

Just then, the stranger from the club decides that _now_ is a good time to patronizingly rub his hand down his arm. It could be a lot worse, the guy could’ve fucking had his way with him while he was stumbling around and stupid in the club. Gave Changbin fifty cents for the payphone because again, fuck that goddamn fucking Necco wafer, that bum on the beach, and fuck Chan too.

Sharp roll of his shoulder and--“Fuck off!”

“Hello?”

“Oh, Chan,”

“Changbin?” Yes, he’s calling _him._

“Hey, uh, can you—” He feels it in his head first, right behind his eyes, before he feels it in his gut. Right now? Really? But, when it comes it’s unstoppable. The stranger’s shoes look like something that older men with too much money buy at vintage stores. Changbin ruins them with a single wretch.  “Come pick me up? I’m on um?” He looks to the stranger.

The stranger tells him.

“53rd and 3rd? By _Someplace Else.”_  

* * *

 

“Chan I’m dying.”

Chan only had to pull over twice for Changbin to throw up, and that’s due in part to the fact that he had a plastic shopping bag filled with Trot cassettes from the galleria, _before_ he had his wallet stolen. Scatter the cassettes across the cab of the car and mom-arm Changbin at a stoplight while he’s dry heaving into a plastic bag.

As far as disaster club extractions go, this was relatively easy.

“I don’t think you’re dying,” Chan supplies sympathetically as he rubs Changbin’s back. First simply sliding the palm down the expanse of his back, and then back up again. Then, catching the tips of his fingers at the juncture of his neck and applying just the faintest bit of pressure. “I would like to believe I’m kind of an expert.”

Changbin looks all but headless now, his face wedged between his arms face down into the bowl. It’s a sight that Chan’s walked in on countless times in the past. Wedging himself between someone’s legs and the beige stall wall is also something he’s done countless times.

Another wretch, loud and guttural. “I’m not even _that_ drunk.”

“First of all pours at _Someplace Else_ are considered attempted murder in other places. They’re _generous._ Ah-get it out.” When Changbin makes a pitiful half spitting, half coughing sound. “Did you take anything?”

“Just poppers.”

“Ever take them before?”

“Yeah, few times.” Changbin sits up. His skin is still white-green and clammy. Tears stain his cheeks and his eyelashes look matted. “This has never happened before.”

Chan, against his better judgement, pulls Changbin back so that he’s leaning against his chest. “Could’ve just been a bad reaction. Could’ve been the booze. Could’ve been something else. Not poppers.” Chan threads his fingers across Changbin’s stomach. Compact muscle rises and falls, and rises and falls, evening out slowly with each breath. His skin is cold-sweat damp. He smells like cigarettes, and alcohol, sweat, and vomit, and the vague urinal cake scent that haunts all dive bars and lingers in clothes and hair, no matter if you stay for one drink or five.

“Do you want to hear something funny?”

“Maybe.”

“I got my wallet stolen tonight. At the Galleria, while I was getting my dick sucked.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Thirteen dollars, my license, my student ID, and an almost full punch card to the milk tea place down the way.”

“Fuck.”

Chan was legitimately worried when he found him wilting into a phone booth uptown. Now, the worry fades. Changbin’s still leaning against his chest, so that his face is obscured. But, Chan can hear the smirk in his voice, faint and deflated, but there. “How is that supposed to make me feel better? Like sure, you’re a loser too, but you’re a loser that got your dick sucked.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t cum before you started spewing fluids?”

After that, a long silence envelops them both. Changbin doesn’t heave anymore, but neither of them move from the floor.

Chan looks upward at the flickering fluorescent bulb above them and stares at it until he’s blind. Screws his eyes shut tight so the blind-spot-light is imprinted on his eyelids. Opens them again and watches it melt away and all he can see is Changbin.

“I think we should call an armistice.”  

“An _armistice_ ,” more rancor in his voice lets Chan know he’s okay. “What are we war? I don’t remember a formal declaration.”

“Listen, I’m going to bet you’re like me. There’s friends, and then there’s people you fuck. And those two aren’t the same.”

“Exactly,” Changbin rises upon shaky legs, but luckily Chan’s right behind him and steadies him. Flushes the toilet by kicking the lever with his Nike clad foot, still so strangely pristine white and red after the nastiest dive bars.

Chan already feels like he’s fucked up. Like Changbin’s going to bolt, and he’s going to be left out like a canal goldfish on the bank, flopping about, so close and yet so far from what it _needs._

“Crash here tonight. And,” There’s an awkward squeaking of sneakers against tile as Changbin brushes past him.

Instead of storming out, Changbin stops at the long row of sinks. Reaches for a mangled, half used tube of toothpaste and a cheap pink handled toothbrush wrapped in thin plastic. They have a whole gallon container they keep underneath the front desk and sell for a dollar to guests that have left theirs halfway across the globe. Chan grabbed one for Changbin the first time he was told to “get the fuck out.”

 “This for me?” His voice is tinged with something that sounds like anger.

“Yeah.”

For a moment, the room is filled with nothing more than the sound of Changbin aggressively scrubbing his teeth clean, and tense energy. “And what?” Changbin growls.

“And it sucks out there. But you already know I’m not going to give you bad drugs, and I already know you’re not going to steal my stuff. If we can get something from each other we want we should, and if we can’t, we get it somewhere else. No more avoiding each other.”

Changbin spits harshly into the sink, and as guttural as the sound may be it’s the least repulsive bodily noise he’s made in the last hour. Changbin makes sure to catch his gaze in the mirror one final time. “I think that’s fucking stupid.”  

And it’s like whatever fight Changbin had left in him was used up in trying to feign anger and kissing him. His fingers grip Chan’s shirt loosely. His lips, although chapped dry from dehydration, press up softly against Chan’s. He waits, doesn’t force, for Chan to dip his tongue inside.

He tastes like toothpaste, and yes bitter bile still lingers on his breath. Chan’s disgust is buried by relief, because for one beautiful yet terrifying moment he truly believes he’s at peace with Changbin.

* * *

 

Changbin wakes with an ache in his back, and an ache in his head. Ache in his head because he barfed his brains out, and _only_ got to the point where he could keep a glass of flat ginger ale down after three in the morning. Ache in his back because Chan insisted that they sleep on the floor in case he needed to get up, go to the bathroom, and puke for the millionth time.

They. Both of them in a nest of pillows and blankets pulled from Chan’s lofted twin bed that hovers close to the ceiling.

His first thought is to roll over slowly, grab his shoes and socks which sit a few feet away at eye level, and close the door so slow that Chan sleeps right through it.

But, in his sleep, Chan’s expression is soft and relaxed as he makes a contented sigh in his sleep. Lips parted, he breathes through his mouth. In the faint morning light, Changbin can see just how long his lashes are. He can remember Chan telling him how he has problems sleeping.

So Changbin decides to not do anything to risk waking him.

After all, they have a truce.


	3. Chapter 3

Chan told him that they should get what they wanted from one another. But it’s so scary when it turns out that Chan just so happens to be able to give him everything that he wants. All out terrifying is the way that Chan can give him things that he didn’t even know that he wanted. No sooner than he gets a taste of them, he _needs them,_ as if they were vital, like oxygen.

“Whatcha doin?” Changbin asks as he watches Chan slice and shove a whole beet into an already crowded blender. Shiny and expensive looking, it’s distinctly different from the other hostel appliances like the stove with two dials, and a microwave with buttons have all been rubbed clean, so you just have to kind of guess.  

“We’re juice fasting now,” Chan responds simply before mashing the button on the blender front. The machine roars to life and drowns out whatever response that may have come next. Beets, apples, berries, and leafy vegetables swirl together, to form a pulpy, purple emulsion.

“Okay,” he’s kind of getting used to Chan’s fondness for fad diets. Last week they ate cabbage soup a couple of times a day. He kind of hopes they go back to keto, because it’s simple. Meat, meat, and more meat. Either way, he’ll do it because it means that Chan makes food for him. “Is this a bad time then to tell you about this thing I saw on TV? It’s called a stuffed crust pizza, and there is _stuff_ in the crust.”

Satisfied with the liquid contents of the blender, Chan divides the juice between two glasses, and hands one to Changbin. “Yeah, not for like…two weeks. One day juice, and then two days low carb low saturated fat and high protein.”

“Fine,” he says taking a long draught of juice. “I want you to take me on a date,” not seriously though. He just says stuff like that because it’s funny.

“Okay, but,” Chan himself takes a long drink, and laps away at the foamy red film on his upper lip. You need to pay because I still haven’t gotten a replacement bank card, and I’m out of cash.”

“Fine,” Chan was kind of milking the whole stolen wallet thing for all it was worth, but Changbin doesn’t really blame him. He _did_ rub his back while he was puking for like three hours.

“And, do you have your permit on you? Cause, I still don’t have a license either.”

He hates driving, no matter how badly Chan wants him to learn. “You’re a dick, Chan,” but he’s already grabbing the keys from Chan’s pocket.  

“Okay, okay, okay.” The Nova rocks back and forth, but not in a good way. Chan’s _still_ mom-arming Changbin, arm over his chest, albeit this time Chan is in the passenger’s seat, and Changbin is in the driver’s seat. “You have to kind of, let up off the clutch softly.”

“No wonder your mom hates driving this thing.” But Changbin doesn’t give up. He throws the car back into park, turns the ignition, and tries again. This time, he eases out of the clutch, into the accelerator, and moves the car into first gear. _Finally._

They drag down the streets at a glacial pace, passed by cyclists and three-cylinder Corollas with horns and middle fingers blazing.

“Seriously?” Chan laughs when Changbin finally pulls into the parking lot, a familiar burnt out blue neon sign that once read, “Health Spa,” now pitifully flashes “ealth S a.”

But Chan, being exactly what he needs, doesn’t seem to mind rediscovering all of these spaces with him anew: the backrooms, the video arcades, the public bathrooms, and the bath houses.

They change clothes in silence, and watch each other with ravenous eyes as they wrap white terry cloth towels around their waists. “If you wanted an audience, we have the dorm shower.”

Sure, he _likes_ being watched, and he likes being watched when he’s with Chan. He doesn’t need the sting of eyes upon them, or the grope of overly familiar hands upon them when they visit these spaces to confirm that they look good together.

But there’s something else there too.  “Listen,” Changbin pulls him in for a sticky wet kiss. Chan’s skin feels warm from a long day spent out in the sun. “There’s an audience sure, but the hot water lasts for longer than five minutes here.”

He likes fucking outside of the concrete hostel walls and the backseat of Chan’s car. It cuts into the intimacy, and quells the sour feeling in his stomach.

Makes it feel like they’re still just fucking around. No big deal.

Changbin pulls them toward the sauna.

Chan follows, with little more than a towel, a condom, and some lubricant.

There’s always the uncertainty. Who you want versus who you get. When Changbin walks into the door to places like this, he already has something he wants and he knows exactly how he’s going to get it.

Obscured by steam, Changbin can see two men in the room already jerking off. Another couple sits on the bottom bench, one man riding the other. Chan pulls him up onto the top bench row of the sauna room and pulls down his towel.

Whenever he’d go alone, Changbin always felt like he had to look over his shoulder. For awhile, thought that would be enough.

Abruptly found out that it wasn’t just a few weeks ago.

One of the other men gets too close while Chan’s got two fingers stretched inside of him. “Sorry, not interested.” When Chan’s around, Changbin doesn’t even feel the _fear_ he’s come to associate with flat out rejecting someone. Doesn’t worry about bad drugs or spiked drinks.  

Fuzzy-dizzy from the heat and the steam, Changbin lets Chan lay him down onto his spread out towel. Pushing his own towel aside, Chan quickly pushes inside. Changbin can feel his own molten body draw up tight at the intrusion, but in the best of ways.  Fuck. The way that Chan fucks him is so good.

_Oh fuck._

_Oh fuck._

_Fuck, fuck, fuck._

He can see Chan in little flashbulb busts, when he forces his eyes open. Clenched jaw, furrowed brow, sweat beaded upon his upper lip and forehead, like he takes fucking him _very_ seriously. He can feel Chan, buried deep inside of him, sweat slicked skin sliding against him. Fingers digging into his hips.

Holy fuck he’s got it bad.

Cause the boy hasn’t even touched his dick. And his own hands feel heavy, and glued to damp towel covered wood, and he already feels like he’s going to fucking pop at a moment’s notice.

“I think I’m gonna cum?”

“For real?”

“Yeah.”

Chan’s tight expression softens, and he smiles at Changbin. “Holy shit, that’s so hot.”

That’s all it takes and he’s cumming onto his stomach completely untouched.

* * *

 

He told Changbin that they should get what they wanted from each other, and when he said that he imagined that it would never evolve past the push and pull zero sum game that they were playing with each other. For that reason, it’s difficult to believe that _anything_ truly changed after Chan peeled him out of a phone booth and took him home. 

Chan is pulled from his sleep slowly. Eyes flitter open, roll onto his back, and drift back asleep. Then, from a place just behind his eyelids, the nagging sensation that he needs to be awake. Eyes flitter open, and he’s greeted with the sight of the water stained, popcorn ceiling for a fraction of a second before he dozes off once more.

A tickling sensation at his neck pulls him awake once again, and Chan opens his eyes to the sight of Changbin straddling him, naked, except for his underwear. Changbin ruts against Chan’s own half hard cock as if to belligerently remind him that he’s been busy while Chan’s been asleep. A sticky patch of pre-cum darkens his gray and blue striped briefs. “You wouldn’t stop snoring, and I needed to do something about it.” Foregoing a good morning kiss completely, Changbin leans forward and makes a thick wet sound in his ear as his tongue laps against the lobe and dips inside.

In that moment, the quick response he had up his sleeve is discarded into the sea of twisted sheets and blankets. A hoarse moan falls from between Chan’s lips.

“Shh,” Changbin silences him with a quick, open mouthed peck. “It’s early, and it’s quiet.”

Right. Muted light seeps through the drawn blinds. The hostel is dead silent right now.  No babbling chatter in a half dozen languages streaming in from the kitchen. No leftover pizza jammed into the toaster to set the fire alarm off. Not even the ancient pipes have been summoned to life with a shake and a squeak to prompt a long row of people in the hallway waiting for a shower. Meaning there’s absolutely nothing to cover up the creek of the old particle board bunk bed.

“I just want you to know,” Chan says as he writhes out of the t-shirt he’d fallen asleep in and then goes for his underwear. All it takes is a few firm tugs on his cock to get him to full hardness. “The last time I tried this with you, you kicked me in the stomach.”

“I need my beauty rest, but there’s no saving you no matter how much sleep you get,” Changbin quips as he catches the waistband of his own underwear underneath his thumb.

Just because Changbin is softer to him now, fewer barbed statements, and more frequent visits, doesn’t mean their sex softens. Every fuck with Changbin is a challenge in a way that Chan didn’t understand could happen when you have sex with a person more than once. Every acrobatic scene in porno was meant for beginners compared to what they did.

Changbin searches in the folds of the sheets for the condoms and lube that are never quite where they left them. Upon finding them, he helps Chan roll one down his cock before spilling almost the entire bottle of KY on his skin and on the sheets.

Slippery wet on his stomach and his thighs. “That’s really cold!” Chan hisses between gritted teeth. At least he’s fully awake now and able to remember everything about this moment. Changbin’s hair is mussed from sleep. There are a half dozen hickies trailed down his neck and his chest.

“It’s gonna be worth it. Trust me.”

Of course, Changbin is a man of his word, reaches behind him, lines up Chan’s cock, and slides down on him inch by inch in one single, fluid motion.

“Fuck Changbin,” Here’s the thing. Anyone can see this version of Changbin. Expression pinched tight from taking dick too fast, body pulled tight at the intrusion. Anyone can see it in the backrooms of bars and public bathrooms up and down the boardwalk.

“Trying.”

But only Chan gets to see what happens after. Only Chan gets to see what happens now, as Changbin’s pained expression fades away into something much softer, and much sweeter. Heavy lidded eyes and pink lips parted with his tongue. No one gets to lay Changbin down onto faded floral sheets or have him ride them. These things are just out of reach of a quick and dirty public fuck. “You feel so good.”

“Yeah,” Changbin smirks in a way that lets Chan know he doesn’t even know the half of it. “Really helps that somebody fucked me so hard last night I hands freed.” Changbin doesn’t kneel, but hovers over Chan in a squatting position. For balance, Chanbin grabs onto the exposed pipes directly overhead. Wobbles slightly with the transition.

“Oh my god. Please don’t fall while we’re fucking.” Chan steadies him by holding onto his flank with a splayed wide hand. 

“I’m not?” As Changbin says this, he shakes trying move on Chan’s cock. Letting it slide almost all the way out until the ridge of his cock catches on the rim. Chan grabs himself by the base and holds himself while Changbin glides back down.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t worry since you’re always so graceful.” Changbin makes him feel like high choppy ocean waves and red and blue lights in the rear-view mirror. Nervous. Yet, he chases that feeling to the end of the Earth doesn’t he? Takes the board out even when there's a riptide warning. Revs the engine whenever he’s at a stoplight next to a newer, shiner car like a Firebird or a Supra.

Warm wet. Warm wet. Warm wet. Changbin envelops him over and over and over again in a hypnotizing rhythm. Equally spellbinding, the way that Chan can see every muscle in his body ripple as he holds himself in place. Thick muscles in his neck clench. Bicep muscles that he’s seen grow with time, and help train into shape pull his skin taut, and his stomach rolls with each thrust.

Chan isn’t going to last long at all and desperately doesn’t want it to end. So, he tears his gaze away from Changbin’s body and stares at the ugly popcorn ceiling in a desperate attempt to hold on for a little longer, have Changbin a little longer. Because _really_ , how long is _any_ of this going to last?

“Chan,” Changbin’s voice is husked and demanding. Yet, Changbin gives. “Look at me.”

So Chan does as he’s told. Changbin is blush red from his cheeks to his chest.

“It’s okay. I’m gonna cum really soon too.”

Changbin lets go of the metal pipes overhead, falls to his knees, and falls deeper onto Chan’s cock. Changbin’s hands splay wide on Chan’s chest, and Chan grips the firm flesh of Changbin’s ass.

He and Changbin shake against one another, Changbin from the strain of holding himself upward, and Chan from orgasm. Their kiss is all teeth and no tongue. Sweat slicked skin slides against sweat slicked skin. It’s never been like this with anyone else before. He’s never woken up with anyone else before.

Does Changbin know that?

Does Changbin care?

Does it make him feel dizzy like it makes him feel dizzy?  Or is _all_ of this going to end up more like the time he woke up and found the cute girl from Portugal stuffing all of his CDs and cassettes and cash into her knock off Louis Vuitton?

Chan takes Changbin into his arms, rolls him over onto his stomach and immediately plunges two fingers back inside of his slippery-wet hole.

“Fuck, Chan,” now it’s Chan’s turn to remind him to be quiet. Cover Changbin’s mouth with the palm of his hand while he wrings out every last bit of pleasure from Changbin’s body. Because it’s what he wants, because each twitch and each moan belongs to him. 

No matter how much Changbin allows him, he always, _always_ wants more. Greed melts away to hunger. Entitlement fades into something much, much scarier. He’s spent so long chasing after Changbin, he never considered how to keep him.

* * *

 

One night in a nest of blankets on the floor is followed by two more nights in Chan’s lofted bed. A week becomes a trip to the hardware store, so Chan can cut a copy of his bedroom key to give to Changbin. Changbin hangs it on his boardwalk braided hemp keychain alongside his apartment key. Another week, and Chan’s consolidating his underwear and sock drawers so Changbin can keep clothes in Chan’s room.

They move fast like lesbians with the key to a U-Haul while continuing to act like it’s all convenience driven. Like it’s another trip to a backroom.

After all, as Chan always begs into the hollow of his throat or the shell of his ear, “Venice is so far away from KTown. You can sleep in if you stay here.”

And of course, Changbin yawning into his hand as he watches Chan count down the drawer. “I’ll stay tonight because I want to watch cable.”

He’s so close now, and with that closeness, Chan becomes more human than almost anyone else he’s ever fucked. Now he needs it. Every mundane detail about his friend’s life.

“Are you positive your parents don’t know?” Changbin asks this with a folded over, dog eared copy of _Highway Hustler_.  A novella with a hundred and fifty pages easy, Changbin will have it read and buried in the cardboard box filled with two dozen other novels similar in nature _Skid Row Stud, Hot Meat, Young Jock Snappers,_ that Chan keeps stuffed into the back of his closet. All of them, Chan swears, were left behind by absent minded guests.

Sure.

“Don’t get me wrong. My parents are pretty okay with everything. I don’t think they’d just let anyone with a passport into their house if they weren’t.” They don’t talk about it much, but Changbin can fill in the blanks. Chan’s mom has bleach blonde hair, another strange hereditary trait of the Bang clan. His dad, fresh from getting cut from the Korean Olympic team, got his start in California with what he horrifyingly calls “Aqua Jazzersize.”   Different than his own parents, different from most Korean parents, but hauntingly the same. “But, it’s one of those...You know, fine so long as it doesn’t affect us directly. I think.”

“Your room is on the floor at the end of the girl’s dormitory hall. Who puts their twenty-one-year-old son on the same floor as all the girls? They like, have to know.”

“Ah, yeah my dad left my little sister and brother at Ralph’s yesterday. If that tells you anything.”

“Yeah, he called me Chad. How long have I been staying here?” Mr. Bang is a first-class space patrol officer.

Changbin shifts on Chan’s lofted bed mattress, leans his head over the edge and half watches Chan dry off from his shower, half reads the filth in the novel before him.

“He what?”

“Yeah, we passed each other in the hallway. I had a bag of dirty linens thrown over my shoulder, and he’s just like, “Hey Chad! How’s it going?”

“Oh my god.”

“I think they know. You have a Chad sleeping in your room four or five nights a week.” Rough pulp paper scrapes as he turns the pages.

Changbin’s eyes drift across the page, each passage “I want to fuck your ass,” Peter repeated, grgridng the heel of his hand across Julio’s bulge. For fuck’s sake, typos in a published work? He could probably do way better. He could dictate, and Chan could translate into English.

Changbin flips about twenty pages ahead and lands in the middle of a lackluster blowjob scene.

“I kind of hope they don’t.”

At that moment, they’re interrupted by the jostle-ring of a small bell. The hostel’s mascot, a toothless, paunchy Chihuahua walks into the room.

“Richie!” Changbin immediately rolls over and jumps down from the top bunk. Immediately, he scoops the dog up into his arms, despite a frustrated growl of protest.

“They’re kind of used to it by now.”

“What,” Changbin sniggers to cover up an emotion that has no name, but feels caught between jealousy and fascination. Slimy, like the feeling of the dog licking his jawline. “Used to you boarding the people you’re fucking?”

“Ah, you know the terrarium in the common room?” Chan rakes a comb through his thick curled hair.

“Yeah,” ah. A Chansplanation. When two or three words would be fine, but he’s gotta make it deep.

Changbin likes it when he does this.

“Those Anolis are the ancestors of a half dozen brave green and brown colonists from over on Wilshire. The feral cats that my mom complains about?”

“Snowball, Shadow One, Pac-Man, Shadow-Two, Rex Chandler--” Jointly named after a porn star they both decided was their favorite after their long weird night at the video arcade.

“Yeah, I started feeding them when we moved in. Mom keeps doing it. And you know all about little Richie.”

“Please don’t talk about it. I’ll cry.” No fucking joking. He will.

Little Richie was named for the family’s odd love of true crime and the dog’s busted teeth. Yeah, they named the dog Richard Ramirez, like the serial killer.

Richie was inherited from one of inhabitants of Pacific Avenue. A man with a milky eye, a very lived in Chevy van with four flat tires left Richie with the family for safe keeping when he needed to go to the hospital.

“But Dollywood,” she’s the giant morose goldfish in the tank in the lobby. She drifts from one end of the tank, bumps against it, and lets the filter drag her backward while smaller fish dart all around. “Tell me you got her at a carnival or something.”

“Yeah one of my friends lives down in the canals. I kept seeing these shining gold scales whenever I’d leave his house. So, one day I brought a pickle jar and--”

“Of course you did,” Changbin responds. “So, what? You just pick up strays? And I’m like one of them?” Fully intending for his voice to sound barbed and venomous, it comes out cracked and vulnerable instead.

Chan closes the distance between them without a word.

Changbin’s received many shut-up kisses from Chan. Harsh kisses that bruise on contact, needy kisses that make him melt against Chan immediately. This kiss is so different. Their lips mismatch so that upper lip meets lower lip. Chan sighs into the kiss, dreamlike yet tired. Different, but still a shut up kiss.

When they part, Chan’s voice is husked yet certain. “When I’m honest and I’m serious, you don’t listen to me. When I really have no idea and just say something without thinking about it, you hang onto every word.”

That’s not true.

Chan links their fingers together, but the gesture is anything but tender. He squeezes too hard and twists his wrist at an odd angle. He can feel Chan’s breath against his lips as he speaks and drowns in the ire-lust in his eyes. “Changbin, I’m not fighting with you about this.”

* * *

 

Changbin’s spent more time than he’d like to admit inside of the hostel, and so many nights eating dinner with Chan’s siblings, and his parents, and a dozen or more kids from just as many countries. Argued in Korean over someone who only spoke Cantonese for the remote to the television in the common room. Knows that the master key to the rental lockers is taped to the bottom of a potted cactus in the lobby. He feels comfortable in Chan’s space, but that took weeks. In boardwalk time might as well be centuries.

It takes Chan twelve minutes. Maybe even less than that. All he knows is that he left for the corner store for milk at mom’s request at 7:31, and his watch reads 7:46 when he returns to the apartment filled with laughter “Oh, this is really good.”

“Thanks. Secret homemade recipe. Banana pudding from a box and wafers...from a box,” his mom laughs in response.

Chan’s early.

When he opens the door, droplets of sweat that had been building against his skin turn clammy. The change in temperature, dry heat meets cool air conditioning, a rare treat which his parents rarely indulge in, makes his skin pique with gooseflesh.

From the hallway, he can see his mom and Chan sitting at the kitchen table their faces illuminated in soft morning light that trickles in through the nicotine and gingham yellow curtains over the kitchen window.

It’s not that he’s angry that’s Chan’s here in the kitchen and not out on the sidewalk waiting in his car. It’s not that he has anything to be embarrassed of. It's just that, when he takes his shoes off at the door here, he also takes off a part of himself, folds it neatly, and places it away in the top drawer of his dresser until he wants it again. The boardwalk, the backrooms, the boys, whether it’s Chan or the dozens of others he’s met in five or six short months, aren’t things that he wants to bring home. Ever.

“It is very nice to meet you,” Mom’s speaking now in her stiff, overprotective mom voice, and it matches nicely with her starched pantsuit. “Changbin’s said so much about you.”

“All bad I assume,” Chan responds.

“Not as bad as he’d like you to believe.”

It’s not like he never wanted his parents to meet Chan either. Nah. It’s probably good that they know he’s making friends. It's just that, the whole thing is just a little too close, and a little too personal, and not at all like he’d imagined it. Maybe he’d meet his mom for sushi at the boardwalk and duck into the corner store, or run into Chan at the Galleria by chance between the record store and the shoe store.

But the sight of Chan, dressed in his running shorts and a faded Corona t-shirt eating banana pudding with his mom makes him want to look over his shoulder in paranoia. Makes him hold his breath and wait for the other shoe to drop.

“Ah, there was a reason that my ears were burning.” Changbin enters the kitchen, bends at the waist, and kisses his mother on the crown of her head like a good son.

“Your moms a really good cook.” Chan says this earnestly while his mom lights up a menthol cigarette at the table.

Chan could charm you out of your wallet, your car keys, and your kidneys, all while making you feel like the most special person on Earth. If he sticks around, he’ll regret that statement.

“Yeah, the secret ingredient is that bum wine you sell at the store.” Changbin grabs for Chan’s spoon, scoops up half of the portion on his plate, and shovels it into his mouth.

“Ninety-Nine Bananas?”

 “You’re an awful child,” his mother scoffs. She rises from the chrome and Formica kitchen table, her heels click against the linoleum flooring. “Unlike you boys who get to play,” he just worked nine days in a row, but sure ma.  “I need to go to work. Be nice to Chan.”

The door closes and locks with a click. Chan doesn’t speak until the sharp sound of Mom’s heels clanging down the steps fade into silence. “So, you gonna?”

“What?”

Chan smiles when he says it. Like he already knows. “Be nice.”

* * *

 

There are four things in Changbin’s room. There’s a bed, neatly made with a comforter and sheets that still had creases in them from being folded and stuffed into department store packaging. Next, there’s dresser that may very well be antique and may very well be pulled from the alleyway. His Walkman rests upon that dresser. Finally, a steel pull up bar jammed into the entryway of his room so that the door wouldn’t close right unless it was removed.

Nothing more.

Chan doesn’t believe for a moment that these are all the possessions his friend has. Quite the contrary. He brushed past no less than pillars of moving boxes stacked two high in the hallway leading up to Changbin’s door. The boxes on top were open and their contents exposed. No, it were as if Changbin wanted to be ready at a moment’s notice if this place were temporary.

“It’s quite rude to just go through someone’s house,” Changbin’s voice pulls him out of his reflective stupor.

“Sorry,” Chan responds. Changbin wasn’t gone more than a minute or so. Walked out of the apartment in Chan’s flip flops to take out the trash at his mother’s request.

“I’m not upset,” Changbin shrugs. “You wouldn’t know any better. People in and out of your house all day.” The curve of his mouth into an impish smile reassures Chan that no, he isn’t really upset. 

“You need some posters.”

Changbin looks at the four blank walls, taking precious seconds to scan each one before turning to the next. Each glance feels like an eternity. Then, “yeah, can you take me to the mall? I need one of those naked girl posters.” At that, Changbin’s demeanor relaxes. He flops onto his neatly made bed, legs hanging off the edge, body propped up on his elbows. “I have this really old map of Korea packed up in my stuff.”

“Lotta good that does for your prison walls.”

Seeing Changbin relax should make Chan relax too, but in Changbin’s room he feels anything but. Changbin looks at him now with eyes fixed and contemplative. Changbin looks at him like he hasn’t yet decided how he feels about having him in his space, and any little thing could sway him.

But the burn that Changbin’s gaze leaves on his skin forces him to move. His eyes drift back to the pull up bar jammed in the door frame. Without really knowing why, he walks over to it, jumps upward, grabs the bar, and does a few reps. 

All his nervous energy does is crank up the heat. Muscles protest at the sudden demand. Changbin’s gaze intensifies, hotter and hotter until he gets up from the bed and closes the distance between himself and Chan.

Chan pulls himself upward and holds position for as long as he can. Until the burn in his arms is unbearable, and he cannot hide from Changbin’s gaze any longer. So, he lets himself fall onto the carpet with a thud. “Hey.” Cause Changbin hasn’t said a word.

“Hey.” Changbin’s so close, he can feel his breath against his lips. That’s the only warning Chan gets. Changbin’s lips feel rough from long days in the sun. Their kiss has the thick, overpowering flavor of artificial banana.

Chan recognizes the kiss for what it is immediately. More often than not, sex with Changbin is frenzied, to the point of being rough. Both of them together feels dangerous, as they enact their insecurities on one another’s bodies. The kiss is cautious, but needy. Here in Changbin’s bedroom Chan has something impossible to prove, and only want to prove it with.

Letting Changbin know that he understands, he threads his fingers into Changbin’s hair, tilts his head backwards ever so slightly, and deepens the kiss. Swipes his tongue across Changbin’s lower lip and dips into his mouth.

Lips purse together again, but it doesn’t mean that the kiss is ending. Changbin’s mouth tugs into a smile against Chan’s mouth. Another kiss, deep and smoldering, interrupted only by a laugh from Changbin.

“What?” Changbin’s laughter is infectious, and so Chan laughs too.

“Ah, man,” Changbin hides his face in Chan’s shoulder. “You’re gonna never let this one go.”

“Tell me,” Chan can feel that Changbin is half hard through his own running shorts.

“Remember when we went to the video arcade?”

“I remember you snuck in a can of Tab and a package of Reese’s Pieces like it was an actual movie theater”

“Only because you let me. Didn’t tell me it was weird. You just let your poor, fresh off the boat friend, just walk in there--” A playful shoulder slap turns into something more when Changbin balls his fist into Chan’s shirt and they pull each other into another long, lingering kiss.

“I’ve been cruising here for four years, and you’re taking _me_ to new bath houses. How could you not know?”

“Shut up.” Chagbin, determined to keep them on task. “Remember? Back before we went to the booths. There was that muscle beach parody on the big screen,” where they work out in the morning. “There was like a--” Changbin’s voice hitches slightly when Chan latches onto his ear. “Pull up bar blow job.”

“You want to?” But he’s already standing on the tips of his toes reaching for the bar. Calculating internally how long he thinks he could _really_ hold onto the bar. 

Changbin’s already grinding the heel of his palm against his semi. “Yeah,” husked into the shell of his ear before Changbin latches onto his ear and tests the weight of his earring between his teeth. Dips his hand down the waistband of his running shorts and fists his cock before pulling them down completely.

 It’s not their _best_ idea, but they’ve absolutely had far worse. Chan holds a suspended position on the bar as Changbin takes him into his mouth, lap at the slit and flick his tongue across the ridge.

His arm wrapped around the juncture of his knee and, “Ah—Changbin?” the panicked feeling of being lifted upward without warning and being made vulnerable by force as Changbin lifts his body and spreads his legs, making him all but sit on his shoulders. The strain in his body is lessened immediately, and he feels like he could hold this position for a very long time.

Something muffled, that sounds a _bit_ like “trust me,” is mouthed around his cock.

Its different from the way that they usually do it. The attention that Changbin so often lavishes at the ridge and the tip of his cock is replaced long, sloppy bobs up and down his cock. Changbin relaxes his throat and takes him _all_ the way in.

The tips of Changbin’s fingertips dig into his calf muscles, and he wonders if he’s going to have purple-black thumbprints on his thighs matching the marks on Changbin’s legs. The mere thought makes his stomach flutter.

The burn in his muscles is absolutely worth the view. Changbin, eyes closed, face flushed as he mouths his cock. Changbin’s cheeks are rosy, and bulge with the shape of his cock in his mouth. Changbin moans around him, as if _this_ and this alone were enough. Looks up at him through heavy lidded eyes, the expression of a man with a spell cast upon him. In that moment, Chan can see a silent plea for Chan to understand that Changbin is _more than_ his rough exterior.

Of course he understands, but more often than not Chan’s understanding isn’t enough.

The sting-burn in his arms couples with the sensation of Changbin ratcheting his body _tighter,_ and _tighter._

More illicit than the rush of having sex at home where all the worst possible outcomes lurk just below the surface, is the knowledge that no one else has gotten this close to Changbin.

Changbin shifts Chan slightly in his grasp with a soft jostling motion. That’s all the warning that he gets before Chan feels pressure. A single digit teasing his entrance. Pressure, pressure, pressure, and _then—_

That’s all it takes for him to cum into Changbin’s mouth in harsh spurts like he hasn’t cum in days.

* * *

 

After Changbin laps up his cum, they go for a run, as planned. All the way down Wilshire, past Lafayette park up the boulevard, all the way to Echo Park. Early morning cool lingers with dewy humidity. Conflicting feelings of warmth from the sun and from movement and cool battle across his skin.

Changbin watches as Chan keeps a steady pace of exactly two or three strides in front of him. Never more, and never less.

Even though Changbin calls this neighborhood home, it’s Chan that suggests a run and selects a route.

“For someone who pumps iron all the time, you act like you’re a runner.”

“Having trouble?” Chan has the audacity to look at him over his shoulder and grin. Like Changbin didn’t just hold him up and suck his dick at the same time.

“No way. I used to run all the way to the stadium on my days off and meet my dad after work to see ball games or whatever. You know, nosebleed seats while he complains the whole time that I smell horrible. We haven’t done that in awhile.”

Since he started hanging out so much with Chan.

Something about saying it out loud replaces the burn in his chest with a sudden heaviness. He spends his time faster than he does his paycheck, and should it bother him that Chan gets so much of his time?

Changbin isn’t sure.

The more that he thinks about it, the more unsure he becomes.

With nothing but the feeling of his heart pounding in his chest, and the blood rushing to his ears, nothing but the sound of rumbling engines and car horns, there’s no reason to keep talking.

He wants to spend time with Chan, but there are times at the hostel where he feels as if he’s living a life that isn’t his own.

He really likes to watch 90210 even if he’s taken to changing the channel if Chan walks into the room, and Chan really hates sleeping with the fan on even though he loves it. These things remain true, even if they make each other forget them temporarily.

“Go around the lake?”

“Sure.”

They dodge moms walking with strollers, and are passed by people who make their own muscle toned bodies look plain in comparison. Chase fountain spray, and find a perfect patch of grass to collapse upon  underneath a shade tree when they’re finished.

Gasping for air, Changbin asks him, “Why’d you come all the way out here?” They’ve never seen each other on Changbin’s day off before. “You miss me that bad huh?”

“I um,” Chan rests the tips of his fingers atop of Changbin’s as they lie in the grass. Not quite holding on, but definitely touching him. All it tells Changbin is how far they’ve run. So far that there is no fear that their mothers, or worse still, their mother’s friends, would see.

Chan squeezes his fingers tight around Changbin’s own. “I have to go out to the community college and get a copy of my transcript. UCLA stuff.”

“You still drove in the opposite direction then.”

What’s the difference between obfuscating the truth with a half dozen miles, and living an outright lie?

“I was wondering if you wanted to like, I dunno. Maybe come with me and talk to an advisor or something.”

Where does losing yourself end and bettering yourself begin?

“Sure.”

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A playlist to accompany the fic: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRCEVpO1IJ7pyAAXodp2piLVoFm9dbJ-R

 

Chan rolls from his side, to his back, to his other side, all in the course of about sixty seconds. It’s Sunday, and the hostel is eerily quiet for peak season. From the street he can hear the occasional _thunk_ of a car barreling down the street too quickly, and the rhythmic crescendo and subsequent decrescendo of car stereos. Inside, there’s nothing but the sound of his ceiling fan whirling, and whirling and whirling, and it’s absolutely maddening.

On a stifling night such as this, sweat beads upon the brow simply by breathing. Although the sun has long set, there is no relief and the the thick damp blanket of humidity draped across him is too heavy to throw onto the floor.

Even though Changbin’s body radiates heat, even though Changbin thrashes about in his sleep and whacks him in the mouth almost nightly, the heat would be bearable if he were in bed beside him.

It’s the night before Changbin’s night off. Which, they always spend together.

He has no idea where Changbin is, but he can certainly guess. There’s no reason to go looking.

Chan isn’t sleeping any time soon, so he hops down from his lofted bed, shuffles into his slides and braves the sallow light of the hostel outside.

He’s two reruns of _Star Trek_ in when he hears someone stumble up the hostel steps.

He can’t help but notice the sharp, accusatory face of the digital clock on the VCR. The accusation, _3:46 AM._ But without protest, he allows Changbin to into his lap on the sofa and kisses him open mouthed and breathy.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

His skin is damp with sweat.

His hair smells like smoke.

“This one was just on last week.”

Dampened with sweat and lightened by the blue glow of the television, Changbin looks equal parts ethereal and sickly.

“Yeah, I guess so.”  

It’s like he knows, and Changbin knows that he knows.

It doesn’t stop Chan. It doesn’t stop Chan from raking his fingers up and down the expanse of his back underneath his shirt. Doesn’t stop Changbin from undoing the buckle on his belt.  

Because they both know that they can’t stop, even if they wanted to.

* * *

 

“So,” Changbin thumbs through a copy of _Men’s Health_ absentmindedly. “My friend invited me--”

Chan to whips his head upward and loses count while counting down the drawer _damn it._

“Yeah,” Changbin laughs dry and acerbic. “I have like, friends that aren’t you. Keep that the fuck in mind the next time you want to drag me down to the farmers market at seven in the morning on my day off.”

“Ah, I’m sorry I bought you potato sambuusa to eat out on the beach.” Chan, resigned to his fate, throws the stack of twenties back into the drawer and starts back over.

“So anyway, my friend. He says that his friend, well, his friend’s cousin’s, havin’ a little Badugi party.” Their version of poker, most frequently played wrinkled old men who overstay their welcome in cafés and park tables.

Changbin’s speech slows down to an almost comedic slowness as he reads. His eyes attached to the magazine, he mouths silently along with each word as if he wants to memorize how it feels in English, _needs_ to feel it before he can process it. “You know, if you wanna turn that sad, end of the week twenty in your wallet into something a little better.”

“Gambling? I have so many more vices since I met you. I used to never even drink soda.” Now, sometimes, he’ll drink it with vodka with Changbin because it makes Changbin’s cheeks flush red and giggle when they fuck.

“Ah, yes I’m sorry you lived such a pure life before we met. In the backroom.”

“We met on the boardwalk.”

“We hung out and stuff on the boardwalk, but we met in the back room.”

It becomes tense for a moment as it somehow does with Changbin. He acts not as if Chan has done something wrong, but as if Changbin feels disappointed that they didn’t feel the same immediately.

Chan finishes counting down the drawer, drops the money in the safe, and responds finally. “Sure. Let’s go.”

Changbin gives him an address in the part of city where Korea town bleeds into Little Bangledesh. Together, they climb up five flights of steps only to find a microscopic note taped to the door, “ _Go up to the roof.”_

So, they go up five more flights.

Up on the rooftop they find six or seven people gathered in a circle around a large industrial cable spool used as a makeshift table. Some sit on folding chairs and some sit upon stacked milk crates, the kind that he tosses out back into the alley when he stocks the back cooler. Some half crouch half stand near the table.

“Binnie!” A man with a broad nose and bright excited eyes about their age rises from the table quickly. In his excitement, he almost knocks over an open bottle of pink Champale, rescued only by a girl with tight pig-tails.

“I told you I’d come.”

Chan watches as the two of them hug-back slap one another. Changbin gets too close and buzzes in Woojin’s ear.

He does this thing to Chan all the time. So, the fact that he’s doing it to Woojin too is unsettling.

For the first time it dawns on Chan just how far his entitlement goes. It’s not just sex, it’s his smile, and his laughter, and the flush of color on his cheeks too. He wants it all.

“Chan, this is Woojin. He works at the noodle shop. Woojin, this is Chan. He sells stuff at the convince store, and works at the hostel, and rents surfboards sometimes, and—”

“Nice to meet you.”

“You too.”  

Chan’s never been one for cards, but he can remember playing with a pile of pennies with Felix against his dad. His initial draw yields a pair, and two of the same suit, so he has to discard right away. The rest is easy. Second round, he pulls a third card, and then seconds later, he’s raking in upwards of $4.50 across the rough wood table.

Cigarette smoke unfurls around them. Someone cracks open a container of take out, and the scent of spicy chicken fills the air. Stolen touches against his hip and his thigh underneath the table, Changbin a surprisingly tender thief.

“Chan’s just like, good at everything.” Changbin laughs as he wins the third of five rounds.

Maybe, but Changbin specifically has this tell. Much like he translates to himself when he reads, he mouths to himself the intricate mental calculations of each hand when a hand has the possibility of winning.  Chan isn’t a lip reader, but by the third round, if Changbin is still mumbling to himself by the last draw, he knows that he needs to be careful.

Three rounds becomes four, and then five.

“Ah, I’m down to my last five,” Changbin is wistful.

“Me too,” says someone sitting across the table.

“I’m still good,” Woojin says with a smile as he deals.

On the first round, Changbin looks at his hand with furrowed brow. He throws in two cards, and then mumbles to himself.

Oh, he shouldn’t. There’s no reason to win the last of Changbin’s money, especially when he _knows_ that will be leveraged against him to make him buy pad thai, or submarine sandwiches later.

But he does.  

Changbin goes all in, and reveals his cards, four high, all different suits.

It’s a great hand, and absolute luck.

But Changbin continues. One hand becomes two. Two hands becomes three. Changbin’s tell, his _mumbling_ no longer becomes a reliable predictor.

“Binnie’s luck really turned around.”

“No,” Changbin corrects Woojin. “I’m always lucky. It just takes awhile to warm up. Hey Chan, I’m hungry. Can we get burgers? I’ll buy.”

Chan is distinctly aware that Changbin read him like large print book, all for the bragging rights of who got to buy cheeseburgers. Cloying kisses, and Changbin’s abrupt absence at night, not the stack of crumpled bills in front of him, make Chan truly wonder if he’s being hustled.

* * *

 

“What, are you like, upset that I kicked your ass?” Changbin chooses to punctuate this statement with the crinkle of paper as he takes a bite of his double double, animal style, extra onions _._

“No.”

Whatever the hell it is, Chan should probably just drop it. Changbin bought them burgers _and_ gave him back the money he lost. “You seem really pissy tonight.” Ok, sure he’s digging his nails into soft flesh and pressing the issue, but he knows _exactly_ what the problem is.

Looking out across the parking lot, Changbin stares at the red and yellow sign and crosses his eyes until it melts into a purple and pink Taco Bell sign and a green payday loan sign.

He wants Chan to hear him say it, even though he knows it’s gonna piss him off.

“How did you meet Woojin?”

“I told you. He works at the noodle shop. He fucked up an order and gave it to me free instead of whatever I was gonna get.”

“Just gave it to you?”

He’ll shake the can of bees. “Yeah? You give me free stuff from the store.” The statement is loaded with implication.

Chan moves his mouth as if he wants to speak, but silences himself with a long draught of his chocolate milkshake. “Like I don’t care if you’ve fucked before. Or like if you’re fucking now.”

“Don’t care, but you’re asking me.” Changbin scrounges around in the bottom of the grease stained paper bag for the last of the fries. Neither of them says anything for a long time. Changbin tosses the empty paper bag into a waste bin.

Back in the car, Chan’s hands rest upon the steering wheel, gaze fixated on the distant neon lights. Each pulse of light, a false promise for the future.

“Can we drive?” Because as pissed off as he is, he doesn’t want to go home. Doesn’t want to leave Chan’s side. Ever.

It’s kind of an awful feeling.

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

* * *

 

Chan does as he’s told and makes a big long loop, from the interstate to highway to 110, to 101 until they’re not so far from where they began, just elevated in the hills.

Chan parks at a tourists’ lookout spot. Turn down the lights and kill the engine, their only protection, is a silent prayer between them, and the late, late hour.

The sight of the stars, the heavy full moon, and the lights of the city below make his breath catch in his throat, but what Changbin does next full stop takes his breath away, full stop.

Chan can only see the silhouette of Changbin’s form in the light, but the shape of Changbin’s body gives clues to his expression. Sharp jaw, and forward gaze, he’s deep in thought on how to best crush Chan with nothing less than the absolute truth. No one else has ever done that, and it only makes him want Changbin more. “Do you think I’ve fucked someone else because I’ve come home sloppy, wet, and covered in someone else’s fuck marks?” The question is punctuated by the rustle of clothing as Changbin undoes his pants.

Pulled up over the waistband of his briefs, Changbin’s cock is already aching hard.

He can’t count the number of blowjobs he’s gotten sitting in the front seat, steering wheel popped up, and hands threaded through hair.

But he absolutely _can_ count the number he’s _given_. 

Changbin’s voice is desperate husky as he works his cock in his hand. “Or do you think that I’m fucking someone else because we got close, and we started fucking?”

Chan’s next move is automatic. He wraps his mouth around the tip of Changbin’s cock.

“Now, I’m getting close to other people, so what if I start fucking other people?”

Chan doesn’t answer, just hollows his cheeks and bobs lower with an obscene sounding _slurp._ He can’t answer, because as angry as it makes him, Changbin isn’t wrong.

Chan, feels every syllable tug at his cock mercilessly. Feels the groan tugged from his gut. Hates himself and he hates Changbin for bringing this out in him. The answer is yes, and the answer is no. Changbin still scares him so much. The tip of Changbin’s cock hits his palette, but Chan relaxes and takes it in stride, all but burying his nose in Changbin’s musky curls. 

Maybe going as deep as he can will shut Changbin up.

Fingers thread into his hair, pulling him upward. “Answer me Chan.”

For a moment, Chan is held there, completely at Changbin’s mercy. Deep, penetrating eyes stare into his soul, and see the truth behind the monosyllabic response. “Yes.” 

“That’s right.” Changbin’s voice is unfiltered cigarettes and plastic pint bottle whiskey rough. That’s all that he says before pushing Chan back down. Lap at the tip, swipe his tongue across the ridge, and feel the throbbing vein in the underside of his cock.

Chan doesn’t even try to jerk as he sucks. Just lets Changbin fuck his mouth relentlessly.

He can tell when Changbin’s close. His body draws up tight, and the tousles Chan’s hair sloppily. That’s all the warning he gets before he’s pulsing into Chan’s mouth, and Chan’s trying his best to swallow with every single pulse.

Changbin lets go of Chan’s hair, and Chan pulls off with a pop. Unable to swallow _everything,_ a thick viscous mixture of his own spit and Changbin’s cum spills from the corner of his mouth.

Changbin looks at him with heavy lids and glassy eyes. From within the fold of the seat he extracts a crumpled napkin and wipes the side of Chan’s face, but he doesn’t offer to return the favor. Chan doesn’t ask for reciprocation either. Some kind of martyr’s penance for what happened at the galleria, because he’s absolutely taken something from Changbin in return.

It isn’t until they’re spinning down the road once more, air whipping through the cab of the car that Changbin speaks once more. Sated, he sits in the middle of the bench seat, and holds onto Chan’s arm. Changbin is so sweet in the few minutes after he’s cum.

“I would’ve fucked Woojin in a heartbeat. He’s like, stupidly hot.”

A new record. Changbin’s post orgasm satiety lasts for less than five minutes. Then, the rancor is back.

“But here’s the thing Chan. I didn’t even know he was into guys until he told me that he’s like, stupidly _in love_ with this rich kid that speaks zero Korean. And, I don’t know if it was obvious, but he speaks like zero English.”

His mouth feels dry.

“I didn’t fuck him.”

* * *

 

“My mom is gonna kill me…” Changbin giggles.

Chan cards his fingers through Changbin’s hair, then parts his hair with a fine toothed comb. "Changbinnie you look like one of those Sunset Strip punks." Chan's voice is shrill in his ear in poor imitation of a woman's voice.

"More like, how are you going to get a better job looking like that? You can't sell sunglasses forever." Changbin sighs.

Chan tips up the glass bottle draining the rest of the Corona he’s been nursing for the better part of an hour. White foam slinks up the bottle and drags back down the glass sides and he sets it back down onto the low rough corrugated picnic table "Yeah, but you’ll blend right in with the students, so this is actually helping you, right?" Electric clippers in hand, he switches them on and a low buzz fills the hostel patio drowning out the sound of the German kids who have been drinking since noon and the girls from Minnesota who have been confined to the hostel walls due to their sunburned, lobster red skin. "Don’t worry Mrs. Seo. I'll make sure your baby boy looks real good."

They've got one of the kitchen chairs pulled outside onto the patio. Two floors below they watch the line cook from the taqueria haul trash backs out into overflowing can. It smells like trash, cigarette smoke, sea breeze and the gummy, fat laden burgers the Canadian family staying in the private room grilled earlier.

The clippers vibrate against his scalp and the shell of his ear. The low vibrations shake thoughts out of the wrinkles in his brain like unwanted beach sand. All that’s left is the itchy sensation of clipped hair falling into the spaces where the faded navy beach towel Chan draped over his shoulder doesn’t reach. That, and the feeling of Chan fussing with his hair, folding back his ears, and getting as close to the skin as possible.

"That tickles," Changbin laughs.

"Its gonna look so good though," Chan quickly walks around to look at the other side of Changbin's hairline.

Chan kneels before him now and cups his chin. He'd rather die than admit it. There's absolutely nothing that he loves more than the thoughtful way that Chan looks at him, and the warm feeling that Changbin has when Chan is looking only at him. The subsequent kiss is so brief that Changbin feels the glow on his skin and hears the smack of the parting kiss moreso than he feels it. Leaves him wanting more.

But one kiss is all that he gets before Chan goes back to cutting the under layer of his hair.

When he’s finished, Chan pulls the navy beach towel from his shoulders, and wipes away stray hair from his t-shirt. Like an afterthought, like he’s asking if he wants another beer, he asks Changbin, “My friend is having a party tonight. You should come with me."

Changbin works tomorrow. He and Chan have been drinking since four when Chan snuck down with two lime flavored Jarritos half filled with vodka and gave him one. It's a recipe for a disaster. "Okay."

* * *

 

"So you must be Changbin," says a breathtaking boy with bleached out hair and freckles. He speaks in English now, and Changbin is aware that's a choice. Not everyone here is Korean, and he'd bet that no one in this house speaks only English, but the fact that they share another more comfortable tongue is clear.

"That's me”, Changbin responds in the plastic smooth English that he keeps in his pocket for tourists.

"I’m Felix. Chan's told me a lot about you." It’s so easy, from the way that his tongue parts his lips tentatively, as if there's more to say, but he just doesn't know if he should. The boy sizes him up looking for something, anything resembling a crack.

It’s so obvious. He's fucked Chan before.

His smile is wide and infectious, and wow, wouldn’t the whole thing be so much easier if he were a complete asshole?

“Hey, um, you want a pina colada? I bought all the stuff, but my boyf-” The word spills out before he realizes his transgression. A relationship poorly defined, or a relationship left undefined on purpose. “Woojin doesn’t like them.”

“Wait, you’re Felix!” This is Woojin’s Felix. The kid that barely speaks Korean but tells Woojin he loves him with gifted Hilfiger and blowjobs.

“Uh, yeah?”

“No, you’re like Felix, Felix. I know Woojin, he works at the noodle shop and sometimes he gives me messed up orders. He’s like, my friend I guess.” He’s slip-slided into Korean now because about halfway through the sentence he forgot the words in English.

Felix works at him in confusion. Oh god. That’s right. If his Korean is as bad as Changbin’s English, he probably got 30% of what he just said. Tops.  There’s a long lag between what he says and Felix’s half-response. “He should be here later.”

Turns out, the language barrier isn’t so relevant after three quarters of a blender full of pina colada. “These are really good,” Changbin folds his fingers in onto themselves and crams them into the can.

“I like the,” Felix interrupts himself by crunching into a chip. “Pizza ones.”

“What?” He had to have misheard. Pizza isn’t a flavor, it’s a food. His fingers chase a broken chip around the container, until he gets it between his fingers. “Amazing.”

His attempt to eat his bounty is just as difficult as retrieving it. The tube that the chips are in are impossibly narrow. Oh god. His hand is stuck. His hand is stuck in a snack food tube. If Chan were to walk in at this given moment, look at the boy he used to fuck around with, and look back at him with his hand stuck in a Pringles can and it would be all over.

“Oh my god--crunch,” Felix crams another chip into his mouth. “Lemme help you, here.” Felix grabs the cardboard can and yanks. Broken chip particles are sent flying across the counter and the floor with a pop.

And not a moment too soon.

 Chan walks into the room with a Corona in hand. Green wedge of lime between his teeth. He makes a sharp sucking sound on the fruit before tossing it out. “Ah, Changbin, let me introduce you to my best friend Felix.”

Chan walks around the kitchen island and puts his arm around Changbin’s shoulder.

“He said they made these in pizza flavor?” Spoken to Chan specifically in Korean.

“Yeah, you heard that right,” Chan responds and kisses his cheek bone with a certain, public tenderness that is unusual for them. Feels wrong in front of Felix. “Our Han is here.” Chan speaks to Felix now in English. “Walked through the door with a mostly empty bottle of prosecco. He’s eyed up one of your mother’s more expensive baubles and wants to go out to the canal.”

Felix’s eyes go wide. “Oh god. Oh no.”

* * *

 

“Were you gonna tell me, or just let me figure it out?” Changbin’s tone is somewhat serious, despite the fact that he’s plucked the paper cocktail umbrella from his glass, licked the toothpick stem, and tucked it behind his ear like a flower. Mouth latched around the pink straw, he takes a too large gulp of his frozen drink, and the effect is immediate. “Ah-Oww…” And Changbin's momentary interrogation is cast aside so that he can bury his face into the side of Chan’s shoulder in agony.

“Hm?” Chan asks lacing their fingers together.

“You and Felix fuck.”

“Used to,” Chan murmurs. Acts of the past, a relationship that slid through his fingers like granules of sand on the beach, something that neither of them could do anything about, becomes transgressional.

The canals are a pocket, microscopic world of their own. The proximity of houses, narrow sidewalks and constant flow of tourists never act as a constant reminder that the city persists, and yet it feels miles and miles away from the rows and rows and rows of specialty boutiques and cold press juice stands that dot the rest of the neighborhood. Save for the house party inside, it’s quieter here. The light pollution, doesn’t seem to seep so far into the inky blackness of the sky when the moon has risen high.

Chan carefully considers his answer as he takes all of this in. The canals, an artifact from a city that doesn’t even exist anymore here before them. Felix, an anchor in the present just as much as an artifact from the past.

Cicadas moan in the distance, and bullfrogs belch beneath the water, and it’s like they too give Chan permission to be grating in is response. “You didn’t do anything with Hyunjin?” He only knows Hyunjin from the fistfuls of letters that Changbin throws into the large blue post office outside the corner store, and a lightning fast “hello,” at a pay phone when Changbin found an international calling card dropped in the hostel hallway.

It’s presumptuous to assume that Changbin’s relationship with his self-proclaimed best friend mirrors his own. But…He and Changbin almost identical on every other thing: They pick up the same, chewed up, fuzzy copy of Bloodsport at Blockbuster every time. Cardio and lifting for the sake of extra onions and no pickles at In-and-Out. One night stands and a crippling fear of what happens when one night turns into almost two months. Why would this be the one thing they differed on?

“Yeah, we used to.”

“Did you stop because you moved?”

Changbin makes the exasperated sigh that he always makes when he’s slightly annoyed or disappointed. “No, before that.” Changbin drains the rest of his drink and rests it on the narrow concrete ledge on which they sit.

“Felix is like…Everything should work, and it really just doesn’t. He’s my best friend, and when we both realized we were into guys, it just seemed like the thing to do. He was right there. When we stopped messing around, it was like…like this weight lifted off my shoulders.”

“Hyunjin and I are simple. We can fuck each other just fine. It’s just that we’d both rather get fucked.” 

“It feels different with you.” There’s so, so much more that he could say, but Chan won’t.

“Chan,” Changbin tastes syrupy sweet when they kiss. Fake coconut and pineapple. “Stop talking.” More slippery wet kissing.  Another kiss, this time Changbin’s threaded his fingers through Chan’s hair. Chan drapes his hand around Changbin’s middle. “Let’s go to the Nova,” Changbin’s voice is husky.

Chan doesn’t respond right away. Instead, he grazes his teeth against hollow of Changbin’s neck, knowing that it absolutely drives Changbin crazy. When Changbin can no longer stifle a whimper, Chan suggests “Babe, car’s parked all the way on the other side of Cabrillo. Let’s go inside.”

Changbin whines in disapproval.

“There’s condoms and lube inside. I could fuck you. Do you want that?”

Chan knows already, of course he does.

* * *

 

Changbin tries to ignore how obvious it is, the familiarity that Chan leads him into the house, up the stairs, down the hallway and into a room that has “KEEP OUT,” written in English and childlike Hangul.

But it's impossible to do when Chan doesn’t fumble for condoms or lube. No, right to the second drawer.

He can’t ignore it, because his head throbs and his gut burns because he wants more of Chan, and has no idea how to ask.

Changbin looks at their options: a bed with a sophisticated wine colored duvet and dinosaur baby blanket draped over it, a desk and office chair, a window seat with matching wine cushions. "What part of this room haven't you fucked on?"

"I thought you didn’t care." Chan pockets the container of KY and the condom before closing the distance between them. 

Changbin can feel Chan's breath on his lips. That's how close they are. "You said its different with me right?"

"Yeah. It's real different."

Changbin bites his lip, thinking better of what he’s about to say. “Then show me.”

 Then, just like the first time they ever fucked, Chan picks him up like he weighs nothing. "Since it matters to you, we can get creative."

 Getting creative involves Chan carrying Changbin over to the desk, which is littered with upturned workbooks. Concert ticket stubs are pinned to the cork board above.

"Wanna finger you first," Chan says as he instructs Changbin to brace himself upon the desk.

If Chan thinks that's enough, enough to disentangle the acrid knot of emotion in his throat, although only for a moment, he's absolutely correct. Shoved into a dirty public locker room, backseat of Chan's car, and quick fleeting moments at home, there's never any time to take it slow.

Chan is so good with his fingers, its criminal. Rubbing first with his fingers down the crack of Changbin's ass and then swiping the pads of his thumb across his hole in slow circles. Friction, at first nonexistent as Chan's digits glide over his hole, too much lube, builds slowly. Chan moves his fingers downward, rubbing his perineum, then cupping the satin sensitive skin of his balls. Trace a line back upward in the slippery fluid, only for Chan to begin taking him apart piece by piece.

"I think that you like this...more than you let on." Chan growls into his ear. "Where we are and what we're doing." Viscerally slow, Chan breaches him with a single digit. Pulls out again, pours more lube on and penetrates him again.

"I think," Changbin stifles what he can only assume is an awful, vulnerable sound. "You're really lucky you have long fingers and a nice dick."

Chan's breath and tongue are hot in his ear. His clothes feel rough against Changbin's bare skin. He's almost completely naked and Chan's still fully dressed.

They fuck with less preparation all the time, but for some reason the slightest of intrusions makes Changbin burn.

Slight curl, slow drag, over and over again until another finger catches his rim. Then, more pressure.

"I wanna fuck you open like this all the time Changbin. Everyday so that you're always, always ready for me."

"Fuck," Chan's laying it on so thick tonight, and it only makes Changbin feel angry at himself when it only winds him up tighter, makes the fire in his chest burn hotter.

Chan alternates between scissoring wide to stretch him out and going deeper.

"Chan," he struggles to string a coherent filthy statement together. "Get inside of me."

"You could cum like this, huh?"

"No. going to milk your cock fucking dry."

"Prove it."

It's insane how easily it happens. No awkward fumbling. No toes caught in socks. Chan pulls his fingers out, they undress the rest of the way, and Chan makes good on his promise to get creative.

"Trust me," Chan whispers into his ear before pushing him down onto the bed and entering him in the missionary position.

Then, before he can even bitch about being on the bed, where he knows they’ve fucked, Chan works his arms around Changbin's waist. Instinctively, Changbin wraps his legs around him. Chan picks him up, but stays buried inside.

Changbin's whole body burns from the demands that Chan makes of him: legs and core muscles tight, hole stretched and stinging. Their range of motion limited, Chan's thrusts are shallow, and limited. Body pressed to body, Changbin can feel each labored breath as he clambers against sweat slicked skin.

Chan sinks into him deep, and Changbin feels it _deep._ The pressure of Chan’s cock against that place deep inside of him that makes getting fucked feel _so good_ is constant. Hanging on to one another means that his cock is left pitifully neglected. Leaking, strained, and trapped against the smooth skin of his stomach.

Its personal and its intimate and when its combined with the sugary alcohol it makes his stomach feel sour.

Thank God it only lasts for a matter of seconds.

"You think you could do that to me?" Felix's voice cuts through the sex static that crackles throughout the room. Fuck.

For a moment, they just stare at one another. Woojin and Felix. Changbin and Chan. Then, like they weren’t even interrupted, Felix pulls Woojin downward into a sloppy, open mouthed kiss. Woojin guides them backwards, and they tumble backwards onto the bed.

It’s the hottest thing that Changbin’s ever seen.

* * *

 

Felix invites them over with a simple, almost genuinely concerned, "get in bed, you're making us tired and we haven't even fucked yet."

Chan looks at him for permission and he gives it. “Fine.” What’s he going to do? Have Chan pull out so they can stuff their dicks back into their pants and argue with each other all the way down Abbot-Kinney in front of god and every single vacationer walking up and down the canals? Fuck in the Nova while they’re both thinking of Woojin and Felix?

What good would that do?

If Chan’s telling the truth, and it is truly different…If he’s telling the truth, and it doesn’t matter if he’s close to someone else, then it won’t feel any different than fucking at the bath house, or the video arcade, or the backrooms whenever they go together. Approaching the bed, Chan places him back onto the bed in a position similar to that which they started in. Back on the sheets, legs hanging off the edge of the bed, quickly wrapped around Chan’s middle as Chan stands on the carpet.

Chan is so often rough and so demanding on his body, but he places Changbin upon Felix’s bed as if he were something worthy of protecting.

As if he needed protecting, here of all places.

Felix and Woojin mirror their position.

Felix has freckles upon his face that range from just barely darker than his skin to dark brown. Felix's lithe body is deceptively muscular when all his clothes are peeled away. Felix makes noises that reverberate through his body like a club baseline when Woojin fucks into him. His throat bobs with each moan, timed perfectly with each and every time that Woojin fucks into him.

Woojin’s nostril’s flare outward when he fucks Felix. Not when he’s waiting for him to adjust to his cock. Not when he’s teasing him in slow circular motions of his hips, but when he gets _really_ into it.

They look good together.

But he knows that he and Chan look better.

The weight of eyes are heavy upon him. Them. 

Changbin can feel the heat of Chan’s gaze upon him. Low and radiating at first, like an ember. Each second that Changbin’s gaze lingers elsewhere, accelerant, fanning the flames outward and upward. Higher, and higher still.

He and Felix lay upon the bed in similar positions, their faces inches apart from one another. Felix looks at _him. Not Chan,_ with dilated, ravenous eyes.

Felix tastes like earthy like red wine when they kiss, and it’s strange because the last he’d seen of him, they’d been drinking pina colada.  Felix kisses him, and of course he kisses him back. Felix contorts his arm in the strangest of positions to touch his neglected cock. Because of that, Changbin _can’t_ just ignore his.

But in that kiss, he becomes hyperaware of the purple bruises across his thighs and the crests of his hip bone tether him to Chan and keep him in place.

He wants to, but he doesn’t want to. Because Felix is incredibly attractive. Because he should feel satisfaction in Chan’s ire, but he doesn’t.

And feels something like relief when rough, larger hand pushes Felix’s soft palm off of his cock. “You don’t want things until I have them.” Chan speaks in English and even though Changbin understands, he knows that it’s a message not intended for him.

The whole room is filled with the echo of their moans, and the obscene sound of skin slapping against skin. Cries of “Felix,” and “Woojin,” intertwine with “Chan,” and “Changbin.”

Chan blankets his body and kisses him roughly. Touches his cock off tempo while he fucks him, but it doesn’t matter, because it feels so good. Every part of his body is affected by Chan in this moment, from the ache in the lobe of his ear where Chan’s bitten him to the sweat in the crook of his knee and everywhere else in between.

He can tell when Chan cums, even though they wear a condom. Thrusting hard into Changbin and then in softer, furtive movements. Kisses and love bites cease in favor of long ragged breaths into his ear. He can feel Chan’s dick twitch inside of him, but the sensation pales in comparison to the feeling of his whole body trembling.

In that moment, he cannot bring himself to feel anger or frustration at Chan’s entitlement, because in that moment, Chan doesn’t make him feel like he’s lost something in return.

* * *

 

There’s a party still going on inside. Chan and Felix’s friend Han is just inside of the sliding glass door that leads from the back porch to the dining room. Through the spotless glass, they watch him stand upon hardwood floors and chug red wine from a comically large bottle.

It explains why Felix tastes like red wine.

Some partygoers cheer him on. Others ignore him in favor of store brand chips and slightly stale pretzels. The same tape has been on repeat for the better part of an hour.

Together, the four of them sit out on Felix’s back porch, which faces another brackish canal, and a long row of houses that cost more money than Changbin can imagine. He and Chan sit upon the porch swing, and it feels like the breeze pulls them backwards towards the ocean, and it seems like the ocean is calling them out into the water.

Some senses feel muted. People are talking around them. Felix and Woojin sit at the patio table trying to teach one another English and Korean respectively, but the words, even the Korean words, sound round and obfuscated. Other senses feel heightened. He’s seated so close to Chan. Their bodies are touching arms, and thighs, his hand pulled into Chan’s lap. It’s overwhelming, and it isn’t enough.

He’s wearing Chan’s leather jacket because he can. Sweat pools underneath his armpits, but he doesn’t care. Because he prefers the heavy feeling of the jacket draped across his shoulders, and the thick scent of leather and Chan. The scent seems overwhelming now, so strong that he can taste it in the back of his mouth.

But as it happens, the hand that isn’t held by Chan’s sneaks into the pocket to find a rectangle shaped packet. Upon extracting it, he finds that it’s a package of banana flavored _Now-n-Later_ taffy.

Chan doesn’t eat candy.

He likes banana flavored candy.

Changbin peels away the glossy waxed paper revealing eight pieces of taffy underneath. Unwraps one, pops it into his mouth, and shoves the rest, trash and all back into the pocket of Chan’s jacket.

“I think--” Changbin’s voice is soft, and he almost hopes that Chan doesn’t hear. That his senses are muted too.

“Hm?” Chan looks at him intently. Like the very next thing that he says will be profound, no matter what comes from his mouth.

For better or for worse, “I think it’s different too.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My birthday gift to Changbin is a boyfriend I guess

He’s in love with Chan, and honestly, there are only a few things that he can think of that are worse. Being in love means that he’s told that he’s the only one, and he actually believes it.  Love means getting closer when he already feels as if Chan were suffocating him at times. Love means getting comfortable, and love invites more opportunities for fucking up. Forget to lock the door to their room at the hostel. Fuck around at the apartment on a day that his dad comes home from work early. 

Love means putting yourself in danger under the guise of intimacy. Love means risking  _ everything  _ for the privilege of the possibility of gaining nothing. Love means getting caught off guard when he finds out that no, he isn’t the only one. Love means hurt when he will inevitably see bruises that he didn’t kiss onto Chan’s skin. 

And let’s say absolutely none of that happens. As time marches forward, the shiny goodwill granted to their friendship by their parents will wear off and then they’ll start asking questions. Why don’t they have girlfriends? And why do they want to move out of the hostel and the apartment respectively, and why would they like to move in together?

Love means hurt and ostracization. Not just for them, but for the people around them. He’s okay with hurting himself. He’s probably more okay with hurting Chan than he should be. But he isn’t okay with hurting his parents who fought the world to give him that very world. Isn’t okay with hurting Mr. Bang who still calls him Chad, but sets a plate for him at dinner every night. Isn’t ok with hurting Mrs. Bang who lets him practice driving the Nova even when Chan’s working so long as he takes her to the grocery store.

It’s impossible to move forward after tonight. Might be better to self-destruct together.  

It’s later than late when they leave Felix’s house, but they take the long way back home and walk up the beach to approach the hostel. 

Now, when the sun is gone, and there’s nothing to make beautiful the monster that is the sea, the sea becomes theirs. Theirs to share with the transient, the addicts, and the desperate, because in some ways, although they do not fit the mold, they too are transient, and addicted, and very, very desperate. 

Out in front, there is the sky inky and black alongside a dash of flecked stars that can shine through the light pollution. The moon, nothing more than a sliver of silver. There’s the faint white of seafoam and the onyx of the sky. Sandwiched in between, an endless black void of the ocean through which he can see no end. He stares into that space and swims in that space and drowns in that space. Lets the tendrils of darkness wrap around his ankles and his wrists and drag him down into the drowning abyss. 

If he looks to the left, he can see the neon light and candy gloss prison that is Santa Monica pier. The Ferris wheel glows in shades of tangerine and cyan and raspberry.

For a moment Changbin wants to ask Chan what those words are in English. Something so intricate as cyan...everyone can see it but what if they don’t care enough to have a word for it?

To his left, Venice. Nothing discernibly different about the opposing pier other than a few sets of free weights, but the emotions that he feels is completely opposite.

Not positive versus negative, but simplistic versus complex.

Gratitude. Emptiness. Cold smiles. Burning freedom. Loneliness. Chan.

Together they shuck their shoes, abandon Chan’s leather jacket upon the shore, and drift outward into the water letting waves wash in and out across their ankles and pull sand from between their toes. During the day, the beach doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to the tourists, and the privileged, and those who have the time to stop and catch their breath. 

There’s so much to be said tonight. If he doesn’t warm up first, he’ll pull a muscle. “Did you know? When I first moved here I had a job before the sunglasses stand?” 

“No.” 

“I did. At Santa Monica pier, I ran the water gun game for like…two months.” He adds unceremoniously, “I fucking hate Santa Monica, and I hope that stupid Ferris wheel falls off the pier.” 

Chan doesn’t say a word because it’s like that he knows that even without context this is important to Changbin.  

Hand in hand, Changbin leads them further out so that water first covers their ankles and then their shins so that the waves lap at the caps of their knees. All that he can think about is the shitty Sweet Valley High paperback he pulled out of one of the blue library boxes dotted along the streets of Venice nearby Felix’s house. So distraught by his cheerleader girlfriend’s death, the surfer protagonist tried to kill himself by taking his surf board too far out to sea. 

Is that what he and Chan are doing to each other? Leading one another out to sea to drown? 

Stopping in the shin deep water, Chan cups his jaw with the tentative tips of his fingers and kisses him softly. Within that kiss, each brush of his tongue, each soft breath into his mouth poses a question to which Changbin has no answer. “What’s it going to take to be enough for you?” 

Chan still doesn’t understand, and it makes his blood run hot. 

Chan’s arms are heavy around him, draped around his shoulders and laced at the place between the sharp peaks of his shoulder blades smooth out.

 How could he not fucking get it? Chan himself is enough. It’s everything else that isn’t. 

Chan’s lack of understanding may as well be a rejection, because it feels like a knife stabbed into his heart and twisted and he’s never regretted letting Chan get close until now. 

So his first instinct, and only option is to push him away. 

“What,” Changbin can feel the dryness in his voice, and he feels so parched. Although the truth is desiccating, it truly is what he and Chan are thirsty for. “Do you want me to tell you I love you?” And even though it’s said in abstraction it’s said now finally. “That I’ve probably been in love with you from the moment that we met out at the weight machines?” Waves begin with a roar on the horizon, crash, and pull back with a whisper. Changbin feels that his words to Chan do this now--well up in his chest with angry pressure and dissipate into sadness and foam when he speaks. 

“That if I didn’t know it then, I realized it when you dumped out a grocery bag full of cassettes in your car so I could puke while we were going sixty down the freeway? What good would that do for--” and he almost says, “me,” but it wouldn’t do Chan any good either really. So he settles for, “us?” A truthful, albeit acerbic, “what good would that do us?” 

“I don’t know Changbin, I thought maybe if you really loved me, that you’d tell me.” 

 “Chan,” it’s the same damn argument passed between them back and forth a thousand times. It’s just that tonight, he’s willing to talk about it. Willing to tell Chan everything even if it means losing everything.  “You go around acting like we’re gonna move in together. Like we’re gonna pick out some curtains. Buy some little silver rings and play house.”

Chan opens his mouth like he wants to speak, and he probably deserves to at this point, but Changbin just can’t stop. “Then you like to get pissed off because I don’t say yes.” Anger turns to petulance, because it’s the only weapon he has against Chan. “Have you ever even realized that you never had the decency to ask?” 

“You’re saying that I should’ve said it first?” Using Changbin’s own words against him, “what good would that do us?” Anger tinges his voice now, and it sounds so new and so foreign to Changbin. He always thought that he’d like the sound, because it would justify all the venom they’ve laced their kisses with. Now he finds it absolutely terrifying. “I’m always sticking my neck out for you. I’m always trying to show you how much I care.” 

“By acting like you own me? By saying all this fucked up shit about how you don’t want me to fuck anyone else, and then fucking me in front of your best friend? Maybe the only person you’ve ever been in love with?” A knot twists in his gut because he didn’t have a problem with it until he absolutely did. 

“You don’t know what you want Changbin. You want to stay at my house all the time and act like my boyfriend until you don’t. You wanna fuck around with other people until Felix has his hand on your dick. And no matter what, it’s somehow my fault.” 

Changbin would do anything to put distance between them right now. Pushing against Chan’s shoulder is absolutely fruitless because, no matter how much he lifts, Chan’s still stronger than him, and he holds onto Changbin firm. That only pisses him off more, and makes more desperate, Changbin’s fitful attempt at pushing him away. So Changbin pushes harder, in anger and in panic. 

When the sand washes out underneath his feet and he loses his balance, in stark contradiction he finds it impossible to let go of Chan. Chan, uncertain of what to do, holds on to Changbin. Like he doesn’t even care that Changbin brings him down with him. 

Falling into the shallow water, Changbin’s mouth and nose fill with brined sea water. The place where his nose meets his throat burns with salt. He’s never learned how to swim, but he’s never been afraid of the water. That is until this very moment when the world is black and it’s difficult to breathe. 

Blindly and pitifully he fumbles through the shallow water until he finds Chan, mere inches away from him. Latching onto him immediately, when he’s near Chan breathing is possible once more. Chan on the other hand, doesn’t fare so well. Bogged down by water, he cannot mitigate Changbin’s panic. A wave rolls over them both, covering them both and the process of breathing has to begin a new once more as they clear their noses and eyes of salty spray. 

“Changbin,” Fingers pry at his own terrified hands that dig into soaked through cloth. There’s a sting behind the sharp nails that dig into his skin and pry Changbin off. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” 

But fear, more ominous than any back room or video arcade, makes him feel like he’s going to drown even though their heads are above the water. 

Wading through the water, Chan pulls them upward and closer to the shore. Tugging at his arms, he gestures for Chagbin to stand up, but he feels bolted into place. 

As the fear of the water dissipates, he’s still left with the feeling of drowning. 

Chan, defeated, remains in the foamy sea water with him. 

Together, they sit in the water facing one another, Changbin almost in Chan’s lap. Skin piqued with goose flesh, he shivers pitifully into Chan’s chest. Little capillaries in his fingers and his toes, so far from the warmth of his heart, turn cold under the night chilled water.

For awhile, they say nothing to each other. Simply let the remnants of waves lap at their chest. The sound of waves cresting and breaking upon the shore, and the sound of water being pulled out to sea mimics the steady sound of a heartbeat. 

Changbin places his hand upon Chan’s chest. White t-shirt soaked through, he can see the dark of sun tanned skin below. He can only imagine the feeling of Chan’s heart beating right now. Habituated to Changbin’s outbursts now, is it calm, steady, and timed with the  _ lub-dub _ of the ocean’s heart? Or, is it like his own right now, racing as fast as his thoughts? 

Speaking again finally, “remember when we first met? When you said you wanted your breath taken away and I said something stupid about wanting to catch mine?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Well that was a fucking lie. Meeting you meant learning how to breathe. How to live. Except the problem is Chan, now that I’m breathing, that I’m living, I feel like I can breathe under water. I feel like I can hold my breath for forever. Neither of those things is particularly true, and if I do them I’ll die when all I really want to do is keep breathing.”

For a moment Changbin is grateful that can he conceal the tears that stream down his cheeks in the darkness and the damp. Voice cracks, chest heaves, as Chan too has placed a hand upon his chest for no reason other than to feel him breathe. 

“Changbin,” Chan’s voice waivers too. “All I wanted to do was fuck when I first met you. Then you stayed, and it felt like you were suffocating me.” There’s fear in Chan’s voice now, and anger too. The same, but so different. 

“But I kept on breathing. Maybe the suffocation was a lot less painful than whatever else is out there, waiting in the shadows. Then I wanted to teach you how to swim, and teach you how to drive, and I still want to do those things.” A voice shouldn’t sound angry and joyous at once, but Chan’s does. Thorn barbed vines yield sweet, sweet fruit. “But lately, I’ve wanted more than that. I want you to teach me how to get better at Badugi. I want you to start classes, and I want to pick you up from them. I want to read new books because you told me to read them. And it’s like, it’s fucking crazy. I care about you as a person.” 

Honest to god, it’s not a deflection when he asks, “wanna know why I don’t work at the pier anymore?” 

Chan’s response is both simple and genuine. Absent is the exasperation that so often comes from Changbin’s sudden change of topic and non-sequitur.  “Yes.” Because it matters. Matters so much more than metaphors about breathing. 

 “Sucked off the guy that ran the balloon dart game, and then after that…” Betrayed by his body, he snivels, meaning that not even the dark and the wet can hide him from Chan. Saved by Chan like always, Chan pulls his waterlogged body closer to him. 

 “This douchebag decided that he had a problem with it after the fact. So he started making his problem my problem.” He can feel Chan’s grasp tighten around his own, a stand in for the interruption that Chan so desperately wants to make. “One day I just had fucking enough, and I never went back, and I had to pretend. For like…a week and a half that I still had a job. Let my mom drop me off on Centennial and walk the rest of the way.” 

Chan’s body is pulled tight, radiating with anger and heat. Not with the protective, puffed chest way that  Chan so often expresses his entitlement, but in a trembling, uncoordinated glut of emotion that hits too close to home. Empathy converted back into anger through parallel experience. 

“Sometimes I hate being here so much. Because my parents did so much for me, I feel this constant fucking pressure. To be happy, and to do right by them. And it’s just so fucking contradictory. Like at home, I just had to deal with the fact that I’m a man, and I like men too and that my life was just going to suck. Now that I’m here, it’s in front of me constantly and there’s this false fucking premise that we can be happy.”

Chan’s voice is tinged with bitterness “You don’t think we can be happy?”  

Changbin doesn’t understand. If anyone gets it, it should be Chan. “You know. Before, there was only one option. Now I have to decide what kind of man that I want to be. If I live for myself or someone else.”  Chan deserves his honesty, if nothing else. “I do want you.” 

He’s made Chan chase him up and down this beach a million or more times. Anyone else would tire, and for awhile Chan only seemed to gather strength and pace. But tonight, he sees a crack in the determination, and it reifies what he knows already. “I mean, I want to be the person who wants to be with you.”

Chan doesn’t respond to him right away. If anything, his grip on Changbin loosens. Like after all of that, there’s still something that he’s just not getting. 

“You want to?” Chan’s voice is husked and dry. In that moment, it becomes painfully clear that Changbin’s very best, wasn’t enough. Although he’s peeled back the skin and the muscle and the bone, that isn’t enough for Chan. There’s still a thin layer of sinew and fat obscuring his heart and his soul, and Chan wants that gone too. 

But he can’t. 

* * *

 

What the fuck is he even doing here? 

And he’s not the only person with that question apparently. 

“Oh Binnie,” Mrs. Bang looks genuinely surprised to see him here. She’s is painting her nails bubblegum pink at the front desk. Tonight, frosted blue lipstick is printed across the cigarette rested in the ash tray nearby. “It’s been awhile since we’ve seen you around.” His heart drops at the words, but yeah. Three weeks. In boardwalk time, that may as well be centuries. “We thought maybe you and Chan had an argument or something…”  _ Or something _ is absolutely right. “He’s out right now, but if you want you can stay here and wait for him. We’re trying a new event with the guests. Taco Tuesday, if you want to eat.” 

“Oh, I just came by to get some clothes and stuff.” It’s a lie, but sometimes a lie is the very nicest thing that you can do for someone else. But his chest feels tight and his mouth feels dry. “So, It’s alright.” Sometimes a lie is the nicest thing that you can do for yourself. 

Changbin still has a key to Chan’s room on his keyring. 

She didn’t ask for it back, so he’s not going to offer. 

He enters the room for the first time in three weeks to find it much like he left it. Oddly immaculate despite the sheer number of objects crammed into every available space:  albums, and vhs tapes, and paperback novels. No space to spare, and nothing out of place. 

Changbin locates a long overdue library book and a pullover that he desperately needs now that the mornings are cooler and the marine layer lingers upon his skin longer as summer creeps into autumn. He locks the room, and ducks out the doorway while Mrs. Bang is on the phone, no need for a lengthy goodbye. 

Exiting back out to the street, Changbin extracts keys from his pocket and unlocks his new to him, taupe, 1979 Toyota Tercel. It’s not a red blooded American muscle car like Chan’s got, but he bought it himself for $800 from someone who decided that grandma was too senile to drive. 

Before he knows it, he’s back in the backroom and he’s either going to lie to himself until the lie becomes the truth, or he’s going to come clean one last time. 

Changbin stands at the bar, condensation slippery hand wrapped around a vodka and tonic, because it’s just as good as vodka and lime Jarritos.  _ Lie.  _ And he looks at men with disinterested eyes, because if he fucks someone else, he’s somehow less in love with Chan.  _ Lie.  _ His throat doesn’t feel tight, he can breathe just fine, and his vision isn’t tunneled.  _ Lie.  _

The truth is, this isn’t his first trip back. He’s tried this a dozen or more times since Chan took him home that one night and it’s been this way since  _ that night.  _ When he sneaks off to back rooms and arcades  _ without Chan  _ there’s nothing but the feeling of blood pounding in his ears and tight belly anxiety and none of the electric thrill. It was easy to chalk it all up to the experience of getting so sick, but the fact of the matter is he can’t bear the thought of another person touching him. The difference is, now, there’s no Chan to slink back home to with his tail tucked between his legs. No forgiveness only a blow job away. 

Across the bar, as if a spotlight had been whipped around in the darkness and shone in  _ just  _ the right spot, he spies Chan. Nursing a brown bottle of domestic beer with a nervous-peeled label, he looks just as miserable as he does. 

Maybe he feels ashamed of Chan seeing him here. Maybe he feels angry because Chan is here. Maybe it just feels fucked up because it’s too much like the night that they locked eyes across this very bar. Because even though they’ve had each other so many times before, but they still want like they haven’t gotten anything. And shouldn’t they be different by now?  Whatever the reason, what he feels is too much and only intensified under Chan’s gaze. Changbin turns away from Chan for a fraction of a second to shield himself from the heat, and in that second Chan disappears from view. 

The rush-roar of blood in his ears fades away and all he can hear is the thrumming of his own heart. Blood rises to his cheeks because he knows. He can feel Chan’s presence before he sees him. 

“I don’t like seeing you here,” tiredness tinges Chan’s voice, but it doesn’t take away the husky edge that makes Changbin shudder against him. 

“Then you shouldn’t have come here I guess.” There’s tiredness now in Changbin’s voice too, but it doesn’t stop him from smiling at Chan. There’s no one else he’d rather go home with. “You wanna get out of here?” 

“Yeah.” 

How many times? How many times did Chan drag him out of a place that he didn’t want to be before he admitted the truth to himself? Does the sudden role reversal atone for everything that they’ve done to each other in the past? 

“Look at this.” 

 “Oh wow,” Chan looks at the Tercel like it’s a brand new Supra. His eyes grow even wider when he opens the front passenger side only to find that the seat is littered with textbooks. “What’s this?” Carefully, as if they were treasures, and not old editions pulled from a used book store shelf, he extracts each one and puts them into the backseat. 

Kicking them onto the floorboard would’ve been fine. 

“Yeah, things are changing.” 

“Breathing?” 

Chan can get the fuck out with that smile. Cause they should probably talk some more, even though that ended so fucking badly the last time they tried it. Cause he wants him, yeah he wants him in the backseat of his subcompact, even though he’s trying really hard not to think with his dick right now. 

Changbin pulls himself behind the wheel and inhales sharply. “Yeah, something like that.”  

Changbin doesn’t ask for his input on where to drive because there’s only one place to go. Because the center of their universe is over the bridge and through the sand. Because their home is a place where a water spotted piece of notebook paper reads, “please don’t smoke pot in the house, towel rental $1” hangs over the threshold. And the place to be reclaimed is lined with spun sugar and rainbow colored lights. 

Chan doesn’t speak again until they’re out onto the highway. 

“Changbin, what the hell are we doing?” All the entitlement and all of the ownership is gone from his voice when he speaks. For a long time, he wanted that so much. For Chan’s smugness to fade because he stomped that out of him. Now, it feels like a hollow victory because he too feels kicked down and stomped on by their own steel toed emotions. 

He pops the car into second gear, and rests his hand, palm up, on Chan’s knee. It’s a trick that he learned from Chan himself, and so it feels natural when Chan links his fingers into Changbin’s vulnerable, upward facing palm. Feels so right when he squeezes his hand in reassurance. 

And isn’t that just fucking apt. Changbin fucks it up, and Chan comforts him over it. 

“I don’t know Chan, but,” its nice that he’s driving now. That he doesn’t have to look at Chan’s face. Doesn’t have to see his hurt or confusion. Doesn’t have to see that Chan is like a mirror to him, and that his own expression bears this pain too. “I hate it.” 

Changbin’s never confessed before, but he’s always thought the way that it’s done on television and movies was absolutely stupid. By the time you get to this point, you should know.

Not with absolute certainty, because nothing can ever be absolute.

Changbin knows that he hates it when the sleep-static is cleared from his mind, he catches sight of his antique map of Korea, now framed and hung on his wall, and he realizes that he’s at his parents’ apartment and not at the hostel. He knows that his heart aches when he works out at muscle beach, and Chan isn’t there to spot him. 

This is closest to absolute that Changbin will ever get.

They travelled across the globe from the same point of origin, headed down divergent paths, only to end up in the same city. The bargain bin tapes Changbin buys with pocket change, are Chan’s by choice. The thing that Changbin hates so much about himself Chan embraces with a quiet, yet genuine, acceptance. Across millions of miles, people, and songs they found each other. Same language, same sidelong glances from strangers, same tightness in the chest. It would take so little for Chan to become Changbin’s everything, and so far his life has consisted of losing everything over, and over, and over again even when he had so little. The only thing that keeps him here is the promise that through the tide Chan will still be here. 

Changbin parks the car in the visitor lot of Santa Monica Pier. Light from the still vibrant pier streams in through the windshield and makes Chan’s face glow with vibrant hues of red and blue. 

Changbin’s lips mismatch against Chan’s lower lip catching the seam. Peck, brush readjust, they land squarely now. Chapped lips match the rough hand that draws around him now and pulls up the fabric of his shirt. It feels secret and illicit, the way that Chan rubs his thumb in soft circles across a smooth swath of skin at the small of his back.

Uncertain of who does it first, someone makes the most vulnerable little sound caught between a whimper and a moan. So different from the dark angry noises they make when they fuck.

Chan traces the line of his lips as if it were a question.

Changbin won’t fault him. After all, even with all the little details in place, Changbin’s done his very best to scatter them about. So, Changbin parts his mouth for him slowly. Chan’s tongue slides through the part in his lips, and Changbin responds, earnestly by rolling his tongue back and breathing into the kiss.

There’s nothing left. No walls, no shields, no fake bravado. Just the water, the neon light, and Chan. 

“I want you. I want you, and I wanna get this right with you.  And I miss you and I—” 

Chan interrupts him with another kiss. Changbin experiences Chan’s confidence anew now, after the entitlement is stripped away, and there’s nothing left but warmth. His chest feels so broad underneath his flat splayed palms. 

“Its okay. I love you too Changbin.” 

 

* * *

They’ve spent countless mornings watching the sun rise, illuminating the tanned, oiled bodies of muscle beach in a manner such as this. Warm up, free weights, machines, and the knowledge that he’ll have to beg Changbin to go running with him. He goes through these motions as their routine dictates morning after morning. 

This morning they lie inverted on sit up benches, crunching until their stomachs ache for reprieve. Or, chicken and waffles, whichever Changbin asks for first. 

Last week, they haggled for almost an hour at the flea market for a Magnavox boom box covered in school yard sharpie graffiti. It sits on the pavement next to them. Music fills the outdoor gym and seeps out into the boardwalk and the beach simply because it is early, and because the boardwalk belongs to them until the shops open at nine and the tourists trickle in at ten.  

In some ways, nothing has changed. Changbin’s clothes still spill out of his hampers neatly sorted by whites and colors. Chan has to stuff them down into the basket and then ask Changbin to borrow quarter to do the laundry. Chan still wanders down the boardwalk, leaving the convince store under supervision of his siblings. They argue about the small things like whether or not coconut shrimp counts on their diet, and the big things too, like if they should tell his parents. 

If Chan didn’t have the ability to look past the surface, he’d still believe that they were close to where they started, two terminally alexathymic people who’d rather reject the cure than accept it out of sheer pride. 

“Hey,” Changbin’s stopped exercising for a moment, laying upon the sit up bench. Brow covered in sweat, and long sleeve shirt soaked through, his chest rises and falls steadily.

“Yeah?” But Chan recognizes Changbin’s expectant look immediately. So Chan stops crunching and lays back upon the bench so that his position mirrors Changbin’s. 

Changbin, in a simultaneous display of his affection and his physical ability, unhooks one foot from the footrest, leans over the bench and moves closer to Chan. Meeting him halfway and ignoring the protest of his flank muscles from the strain, Chan does the same pecking each other chastely on the mouth before the strain is too much. 

“You guys are obnoxious.” Felix says this as he ejects the post-punk cassette they’d had in the boom box in favor of some boy band that’s all the rage back home now. Woojin at his side, they go to the arm press machines. 

“You literally blew Woojin in the backseat of my car at the drive in. While we went to get popcorn,” Changbin fires back.

“Just because you’re meat heads doesn’t mean you own the gym.” Woojin and Changbin may be friends, but there’s no question where Woojin’s loyalties lie. 

“It’s too early for this.” 

 In many ways, everything has changed. The four of them spending time together is proof of that. The fact that Changbin spent last night in Korea Town and drove town to the boardwalk before sunrise this morning, is proof of that. 

Still inverted upon the sit up bench, Changbin checks his watch. “I gotta run,” he says as he rights himself. 

Chan does the same. “Anything to get out of going on a run with me.” 

“I’d rather run a marathon than go to my intro econ class,” Changbin shrugs, accepting of his fate. “Are we still supposed to do that thing tonight? At the hostel for your parents?” 

“Boardwalk ready beach bodies?” Chan laughs because well, he doesn’t come up with the names for the house activities. “Oh yeah. I guess we do.  Assuming my dad doesn’t talk the whole time.” In so many ways, everything has changed. He no longer wonders whether or not Changbiin will want to come home with him, and if Changbin does, if Chan himself will feel comfortable with his presence. For now, this works. 

“I’ll be there.” 

“Alright then.” He squeezes Changbin’s hip. One part reassurance, one part reminder.  “I’ll catch you later.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lost you now, but I'll catch you later  
> Wading through your ventilator


End file.
